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Bill on Bankruptcy: Rakoff Reverses Himself in Madoff Case
The US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware recently reaffirmed but limited the holding of In re DSI Renal Holdings, LLC, which held that under Third Circuit law, neither debtors nor trustees could bring fraudulent...more
The power of a bankruptcy trustee or chapter 11 debtor-in-possession ("DIP") to avoid pre-bankruptcy preferential transfers is an important tool designed to promote the bankruptcy policy of equality of distribution and to...more
Bankruptcy trustees and chapter 11 debtors-in-possession ("DIPs") frequently seek to avoid fraudulent transfers and obligations under section 544(b) of the Bankruptcy Code and state fraudulent transfer or other applicable...more
The Supreme Court recently issued an opinion, resolving a circuit split, narrowing the sovereign immunity exception by limiting a trustee’s ability to pursue avoidance actions against the government when such action invokes...more
We have previously blogged about the Tenth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Miller, a case that concerns the relationship between section 544(b)(1) and section 106(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code. As we explained in our...more
Section 106(a) Doesn’t Waive Sovereign Immunity for State-Law-Based Section 544(b) Claims - The U.S. Supreme Court has significantly curtailed bankruptcy trustees’ powers in United States v. Miller, 145 S. Ct. 839 (2025). In...more
On April 7, Colorado enacted SB 25-133, titled the Colorado Voidable Transactions Act, which amended and renamed the statute formerly known as the “Colorado Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act.” The Act originally created a...more
Recently, in the case United States v. Miller, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the sovereign immunity waiver provision in the Bankruptcy Code is jurisdictional only and does not waive the federal government’s sovereign...more
On March 26, 2025, the Supreme Court held in an 8‑to‑1 decision authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that Section 106(a) of the Bankruptcy Code waives the federal government’s sovereign immunity with respect to...more
To assist a bankruptcy trustee or chapter 11 debtor-in-possession ("DIP") in maximizing the value of the bankruptcy estate for the benefit of all stakeholders, the Bankruptcy Code authorizes a trustee or DIP to avoid certain...more
In the high-stakes trial, Coan et al. v. Dunne et al., Attorney Thomas H. Curran, representing Chapter 7 Trustee Richard M. Coan, successfully exposed the Irish developer Sean Dunne and his wife, Gayle Killilea’s unsuccessful...more
In situations where a bankruptcy court avoids a fraudulent transfer or similar transaction, subsequent transferees who received proceeds of the avoided transaction from the initial transferee can avoid liability in certain...more
In a case of first impression in the Ninth Circuit, the US Court of Appeals recently handed bankruptcy trustees a significant power by ruling in The Lovering Tubbs Trust v. Hoffman (In re O’Gorman) that a trustee can avoid...more
Once upon a time a good way to commit oil patch theft was to back a truck up to the tank battery in the middle of the night, fill ‘er up, and drive off into the darkness. In re: Black Elk Energy Offshore Operations LLC shows...more
A fraudulent transfer is an attempt to avoid a debt by improperly transferring assets to a third party, or a transfer of assets for less than fair value made while the company is insolvent or will become insolvent as a result...more
As you know from our prior alerts, creditors of borrowers formed as Delaware LLCs (as opposed to corporations) lack standing under Delaware law to sue directors for breaching fiduciary duties even when, to the surprise of...more
We have previously blogged about the section 546(e) defense to a trustee’s avoidance powers under the Bankruptcy Code. A trustee has broad powers to set aside certain transfers made by debtors before bankruptcy. See 11 U.S.C....more
Joining the Eighth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that a debtor or trustee can sell its avoidance actions to third-party, non-estate representatives. See Briar Capital...more
One year ago, we wrote that 2022 would be remembered in the corporate bankruptcy world for the “crypto winter” that descended in November 2022 with the spectacular collapse of FTX Trading Ltd., Alameda Research, and...more
In a 2021 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit revived nearly 100 lawsuits seeking to recover fraudulent transfers made as part of the Madoff Ponzi scheme. In one of the latest chapters in that resurrected...more
A powerful tool afforded to a bankruptcy trustee or a chapter 11 debtor-in-possession ("DIP") is the power to recover pre-bankruptcy transfers that are avoidable under federal bankruptcy law (or sometimes state law) because...more
Delaware’s Supreme Court recently clarified the difference between derivative and direct claims in the context of a dispute over whether creditors’ fraudulent transfer claims were covered by insurance policies applicable to...more
In Mann v. LSQ Funding Group, L.C., 71 F.4th 640 (7th Cir. 2023), reh'g denied, 2023 WL 4684702 (7th Cir. July 21, 2023), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the entry of summary judgment by a Wisconsin...more
Section 544(b)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code enables a trustee to step into the shoes of a creditor and avoid a transfer “of an interest of the debtor in property” that an unsecured creditor could avoid under applicable state...more
In its 1997 decision Cortez v. Vogt, the California Court of Appeal ruled that the limitations period during which an action to avoid a fraudulent or voidable transfer begins to run either on the date of the transfer or on...more