Law Commons^™

Sublicensing From A Distressed Company: Are You Placing Your Future In The Debtor's Hands?, Michelle M. Harner, David A. Beck

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The New Chapter 15 Of The Bankruptcy Code: A Step Toward Erosion Of National Sovereignty, John J. Chung

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Forward: Symposium On Interdisciplinary Perspectives On Bankruptcy Reform, Michelle A. Cecil

Faculty Publications

In 2003, over 1.6 million consumers filed for bankruptcy protection, surpassing the previous record of 1.5 million bankruptcy filings set just one year earlier. In an effort to reverse the spiraling upward trend of consumer bankruptcies, and to prevent abusive debtors from using the bankruptcy system to avoid paying their debts, in April, 2005, Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of passing the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA). Widely heralded as the most sweeping bankruptcy reform legislation in over a quarter of a century, BAPCPA was designed in large part to force debtors with the ability …

Bankruptcy Reform: What's Tax Got To Do With It?, Michelle A. Cecil

Faculty Publications

The article takes a two-pronged approach to the issue. First, it argues that all post-petition appreciation should be taxed to the debtor rather than to the debtor's bankruptcy estate because the debtor enjoys the benefits of the asset's appreciation in value and because, from a tax perspective, the results will be identical irrespective of whether the debtor or the bankruptcy estate is taxed on the asset's post-petition appreciation. Second, the article proposes that the gain accruing before the termination of the bankruptcy proceeding be treated as discharge of indebtedness income so that the debtor can defer recognition of the gain …

Greed And Pride In International Bankruptcy: The Problems And Proposed Solutions To “Local Interests”, John A. E. Pottow

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

From just-enacted (2005) chapter 15 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to the U.K. Enterprise Act of 2002, legislative reforms to international bankruptcy are on the rise. One of the thorniest issues facing scholars and policymakers alike in these efforts is what to do with the nettlesome problem of “local interests.” What exactly are these “local interests,” and what is it that we are we trying to protect? Literature to date has been elusive in pinning this down and has offered, for the most part, only undifferentiated anxiety that an international bankruptcy regime may impinge undesirably upon “local concerns.” This article …

The Myth Of The Rational Borrower: Behaviorism, Rationality And The Misguided Reform Of Bankruptcy Law, Edward J. Janger, Susan Block-Lieb

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Prevalence Of Substantive Consolidation In Large Bankruptcies From 2000 To 2004: Preliminary Results, William H. Widen

Articles

No abstract provided.

Recharacterization And The Nonhindrance Of Creditors, David A. Skeel Jr., Georg Krause-Vilmar

All Faculty Scholarship

Using a 1977 article by Robert Clark as the starting point, this article attempts to shed new light on the question of whether and when shareholder loans to her company should be either equitably subordinated or, as courts have done in a few recent cases, recharacterized as equity. In its emphasis on the particular issue of shareholder loans, the article has a narrower compass than Clark’s article, which uses a four-part typology to explore the relationship among fraudulent conveyance law, equitable subordination, veil piercing and dividend restrictions. But the article also expands Clark’s analysis in several respects. The most important …

The Peripatetic Debtor: Choice Of Law And Choice Of Exemptions, Laura B. Bartell

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Debtor Discharge And Creditor Repayment In Chapter 13, Scott F. Norberg, Andrew Velkey

Faculty Publications

Consumer bankruptcy filings hit another record high in 1998, with nearly 1.4 million consumers filing for bankruptcy relief. This trend sparked a debate in Congress about means-testing chapter 7 bankruptcy filings. Proponents of reform argued that it would curtail fraud and abuse. Opponents believed that consumer debt was swamping income growth, and that the deregulation of the consumer credit market had led to overgenerous lending and hence to more bankruptcies. This is an empirical study of whether filers for chapter 13 bankruptcy cases are abusing the system, or whether debtors are truly being swamped by debt in excess of their …

Legislative Messaging And Bankruptcy Law, Lois R. Lupica, Karen Gross, Kathryn R. Heidt

Faculty Publications

This Essay grew out of many three-way conversations and multiple collaborative drafts. We began this conversation at the academic conference in 2003 celebrating the Bankruptcy Code’s upcoming 25th Anniversary. Sadly, we did not have the opportunity to finish either the conversations or to finalize this Essay before Kate Heidt’s untimely death in May 2005. Completed in her absence, this Essay is dedicated to the memory of our close friend and colleague, Professor Kathryn R. Heidt.

International Insolvency Case Venue In The European Union: The Parmalat And Daisytek Controversies, Samuel Bufford

Journal Articles

The European Union Insolvency Regulation (the EU Regulation) is a giant step forward in promoting international cooperation among EU countries for cross-border insolvency proceedings. It adopts a modified universalist solution to cross-border proceedings insofar as they are located within the EU. However, experience has shown that it needs improvement to work effectively. A venue battle now rages between courts of several European countries over which country's courts will administer particular cross-border proceedings and how the center of main interest is to be determined for this purpose.

This Article begins with a detailed examination of the two principal cases where conflicts …

The Hidden Life Of Consumer Bankruptcy Reform: Danger Signs For The New U.S. Law From Unexpected Parallels In The Netherlands, 39 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 77 (2006), Jason Kilborn

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers a unique perspective on the heavily revised U.S. consumer bankruptcy law, which went effect on October 17, 2005, in light of a surprising discovery: It turns out that the U.S. consumer bankruptcy system as "reformed" resembles in many critical respects the consumer bankruptcy system in place for the past six years in the Netherlands. As a result of this serendipitous U.S.-Dutch convergence, years of experience under the Dutch consumer debt relief system can provide a rare glimpse into the future of the new U.S. system. The Dutch law in practice has diverged in significant ways from legislative …

Continuity, Change And Innovation In Emerging Consumer Bankruptcy Systems: Belgium And Luxembourg, 14 Am. Bankr. Inst. L. Rev. 69 (2006), Jason Kilborn

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bapcpa And Commercial Credit: Who (Sic) Do You Trust, David G. Epstein

Law Faculty Publications

Trying to understand and apply the many different provisions of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) has caused people to yearn for the "good old days." At the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges' (NCBJ) Annual Meeting in San Antonio in October 2005, there was a lot of talk about the "good old days" and some singing "'bout the good old days" at the NCBJ "Final Night Dinner" by a larger than life (at least as large as Sally Struthers), Wynonna Judd. And this has caused me to remember a daytime television show from my good …

2005: A Consumer Bankruptcy Odyssey, Gary Neustadter

Faculty Publications

Congress has concluded that the voyage of consumer bankruptcy in the United States is off course and that some of its crew - consumer bankruptcy attorneys and bankruptcy judges - no longer can be completely trusted at the helm. Following years of drama reminiscent of the 1914 silent film serial "Perils of Protection Act of 2005 ("the Act"). Save perhaps the 1938 introduction of Chapter XIII, the correction presents the most far reaching changes in consumer bankruptcy law since the adoption of the Bankruptcy Act of 1898. These changes come little more than a decade after Congress established a National …

Greed And Pride In International Bankruptcy: The Problems Of And Proposed Solutions To 'Local Interests', John A. E. Pottow

Articles

The collapses of Yukos, Parmalat, and other international juggernauts have focused scholarly attention on the failure of multinational enterprises. Even what one might consider "American" companies, such as Chicago-based United Airlines, have made clear in their restructuring plans that their operations have profound effects on the dozens of nations around the globe where they transact business. Government and quasi-government reform efforts to regulate these cross-border insolvencies have abounded, including among others, the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency. UNCITRAL is also building on World Bank and INSOL efforts at promulgating a Legislative Guide for "best practices" bankruptcy codes. Scholars vary …

Credit Markets, Exemptions, And Households With Nothing To Exempt, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

American bankruptcy law has offered a "fresh start" in every state for over one hundred years. As a result, econometric studies of consumer bankruptcy often focus on one of the few aspects of the law that has varied significantly across time and across states: exemptions. Professors Gropp, Scholz and White published the first article to test the effect of exemptions on credit markets. Consistent with theory, they found that residents of states with larger exemptions pay higher interest rates than those in states with lower exemptions andface an increased probability that they will be denied credit. These effects were most …

Bankruptcy And State Collections: The Case Of The Missing Garnishments, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

Recent bankruptcy reforms were spurred in part by a bankruptcy filing rate that has more than doubled in the last ten years and that has risen by approximately six hundred percent over the last generation. Some attribute this surge in filings to Americans' greater willingness to avoid debts by declaring bankruptcy. Most academics, however, argue that more Americans are forced into bankruptcy by crushing debt burdens and aggressive collections techniques. Surprisingly, the literature has largely ignored data on the use of these collections techniques. This Article examines the use of one of the most important collections tools, garnishment, in two …

Courting Failure, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

Courting Failure is the story of a bad venue statute that led to rampant forum shopping by large public companies. This forum shopping induced competition among bankruptcy courts for the cases. That competition in turn caused the unnecessary failure of many of the reorganizing companies and corrupted the United States Bankruptcy Courts. Congress has not acted to fix the statute because of Delaware's parochial interest in preserving the status quo.

The Totality Of The Circumstances Of The Debtor's Financial Situation In A Post-Means Test World: Trying To Bridge The Wedoff/Culhane & White Divide, John A. E. Pottow

Articles

Bankruptcy Judge Eugene Wedoff and Creighton Law School professors Marianne Culhane and Michaela White engage in a spirited debate over a series of law review articles about the proper scope of motions to dismiss a debtor's petition under section 707(b) of the freshly revised Bankruptcy Code. It is an interesting and provocative dialogue, with both sides advancing their respective positions persuasively. As a result, I find myself in the unfortunate position of wanting to agree with both. Since that is impossible, however, this brief article is my attempt to find a middle ground between their two positions. It does so …

Corporate Complicity Claims: Why There Is No Innocent Decison-Maker Exception To Imputing An Officer's Wrongdoing To A Bankrupt Corporation, Jonathan Witmer-Rich

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article evaluates the innocent decision-maker exception in light of the doctrinal foundations of the in pari delicto defense and the Wagoner rule, general principles of agency law, and the lower court decisions that address these issues. It concludes that the innocent decision-maker exception is a doctrinal error, traceable to the logical misstep of a single lower court whose decision continues to be mistakenly followed. The innocent decision-maker exception is inconsistent with the basic principles of agency law that underlie imputation in the context of in pari delicto and the Wagoner rule. No court of appeals has explicitly addressed the …

International Secured Transactions And Insolvency, Mark J. Sundahl, Susan Jaffe Roberts, Jeff Carruth, Walter Douglas Stuber

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The following article surveys some of the significant developments in the field of cross-border insolvencies and secured financing during the twelve months prior to December 1, 2005. The most publicized and long-awaited bankruptcy development was the enactment of legislation in the United States to adopt the UNCITRAL framework for the recognition of foreign insolvency proceedings. Even with the adoption of the UNICTRAL framework, American courts continued to render significant decisions under the former law which may, over time, inform practice, under the UNICTRAL provisions. Brazil also enacted significant bankruptcy reforms during 2005. The international law of secured transactions experienced a …

Hiding In Plain View: A Neglected Supreme Court Decision Resolves The Debate Over Non-Debtor Releases In Chapter 11 Reorganizations, Joshua M. Silverstein

Faculty Scholarship

This article presents a novel resolution of a long-standing circuit split on an issue of critical significance to bankruptcy and tort law: whether bankruptcy courts may extinguish liabilities of parties that have not filed for bankruptcy. Such "non-debtor releases" are similar in effect to a bankruptcy discharge and have become particularly common in both mass tort disputes and general insolvencies adjudicated through the bankruptcy process. In this article, I illustrate how an overlooked Supreme Court decision—United States v. Energy Resources, 495 U.S. 545 (1990)—offers crucial support for the pro-release position. Energy Resources demonstrates that the bankruptcy courts’ "general equitable power" …

U.S. Airways, Petrie, Patterson

Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Case Studies

No abstract provided.

How The Old World Encountered The New One: Regulatory Competition And Cooperation In European Corporate And Bankruptcy Law , Luca Enriques, Martin Gelter

Faculty Scholarship

The European framework for creditor protection has undergone a remarkable tansfomation in recent years. While the European Court of Justices Centros case and its progeny have given European Union businesses choice with respect to the state of incorporation, and hence to the substantive corporate law regime, the European Insolvency Regulation has introduced uniform conflict-of-law rules for insolvencies. However, this regime has opened up some forum shopping opportunities for corporate debtors. Both regulatory competition in corporate law and forum shopping in bankruptcy law have been discussed in the United States for years, while they are relativey new territory in the European …

Abuse Prevention 2005, James J. White

Articles

Today I do not debate the empirical question (what is the cause of the increase in bankruptcy filings?) nor do I address the buried moral question (who deserves the protection of bankruptcy law?). Rather, I speculate about the consequences of 2005 amendments to the Bankruptcy Code and about the reasons it will achieve or fail to achieve the goals of its sponsors. Along the way I hope to learn something about how law changes, or fails to change behavior.

The Supreme Court, The Solicitor General, And Bankruptcy: Bfp V. Resolution Trust Corporation, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter tells the story behind BFP v. Resolution Trust Corporation. I see BFP as a case that pitted relatively plain statutory language supporting the debtor-in-possession against policy interests supporting a secured creditor. I argue that an important explanation for the Supreme Court's decision to favor policy over the language of the statute was its perception of a need to protect the availability of non-bankruptcy remedies for secured creditors. Accordingly, I situate my discussion of BFP in the context of the role that the federal government has played in the Supreme Court's cases interpreting the Bankruptcy Code. In general, I …

Where Do You Get Off? A Reply To Courting Failure'S Critics, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

By historical accident, the bankruptcy venue statute gives large public companies their choice of bankruptcy courts. Over three decades a competition for those cases has developed among some United States Bankruptcy Courts. The most successful courts - Delaware and New York - today attract more than two thirds of the billion-dollar-and-over cases. The courts compete principally because the cases represent a multi-billion dollar a year industry in professional fees alone, because local lawyers pressure judges to compete, and because judges who lose the competition are stigmatized and may not be reappointed. In February 2005, the University of Michigan Press published …

Delaware Bankruptcy: Failure In The Ascendancy, Lynn M. Lopucki, Joseph W. Doherty

UF Law Faculty Publications

In 1990, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware - then a one-judge backwater - began competing for big bankruptcy cases. In six years, that court achieved a near monopoly. In 2000, LoPucki and Kalin discovered that 42% of the companies filing in Delaware during that six year period of ascendency refiled bankruptcy within five years of their emergence, as compared with only 6% of those filing in courts other than Delaware and New York. In a later study, we found the (1) the failure of the companies reorganized in Delaware during the period of ascendency was …