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Full-Text Articles in Law
A Revised Perspective On Non-Debtor Releases, Joshua M. Silverstein
A Revised Perspective On Non-Debtor Releases, Joshua M. Silverstein
Faculty Scholarship
“Non-debtor releases” are bankruptcy orders that extinguish claims against a party other than a bankrupt debtor over the objection of the creditor. Also known as “third-party releases,” the legality of these orders is one of the most important and controversial issues in bankruptcy law specifically and business law generally. The split in the courts over the propriety of non-debtor releases stretches back thirty-five years. However, the United States Supreme Court is poised to resolve the split this term in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy. In two prior articles published in 2006 and 2009, I argued that third-party releases are permissible under …
Silencing Litigation Through Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey, Christopher K. Odinet
Silencing Litigation Through Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey, Christopher K. Odinet
Faculty Scholarship
Bankruptcy is being used as a tool for silencing survivors and their families. When faced with claims from multiple plaintiffs related to the same wrongful conduct that can financially or operationally crush the defendant over the long term—a phenomenon we identify as onslaught litigation—defendants harness bankruptcy’s reorganization process to draw together those who allege harm and pressure them into a swift, universal settlement. In doing so, they use the bankruptcy system to deprive survivors of their voice and the public of the truth. This Article identifies this phenomenon and argues that it is time to rein in this destructive use …
The Purloined Debtor: Edgar Allan Poe’S Bankruptcy In Law And Letters, Erin L. Sheley, Zvi Rosen
The Purloined Debtor: Edgar Allan Poe’S Bankruptcy In Law And Letters, Erin L. Sheley, Zvi Rosen
Faculty Scholarship
This Article represents the first interdisciplinary case study of Edgar Allan Poe’s bankruptcy as an inflection point in the legal and cultural history of debt. Although Poe hardly leaps to mind for portrayals of legal procedure, much of his oeuvre reveals a terror of legal process as an interstitial principle. The anxiety around identity in Poe’s work reveals an ongoing struggle between an individual subject and two opposing yet equally degenerate legal statuses: possession and indebtedness. This opposition renders a distinct form of legal process legible in these texts: the then emerging law of bankruptcy. Poe declared bankruptcy at a …