Law Commons^™

Consumer Bankruptcy Update, Office Of Continuing Legal Education At The University Of Kentucky College Of Law, Sandra D. Freeburger, Thomas L. Canary, Ann E. Samani, W. Thomas Bunch, David M. Cantor, Jan C. Morris, Beverly M. Burden, William W. Lawrence, Lisa Koch Bryant, Dean A. Langdon, Joan Lloyd Cooper, Henry H. Dickinson, William S. Howard, Joseph M. Scott Jr., Joe Lee, C.R. Bowles Jr., Alan C. Stout, James D. Lyon, Sandra D. Freeburger, Geneva F. Parris, Joseph J. Golden, John R. Stonitsch, Hal D. Friedman, Gregory R. Schaaf, Richard H. Nowka, Christopher W. Frost, Scott A. Bachert, Michael L. Baker, Cathy S. Pike

Continuing Legal Education Materials

Materials from the Consumer Bankruptcy Update presentations held by UK/CLE in December 2000.

Debtor In Possession Financing: The Jursidiction Of Canadian Courts To Grant Superpriority Financing In Ccaa Applications, Janis Sarra

Dalhousie Law Journal

Restructuring of insolvent corporations can be an effective means of a voiding the social and economic consequences of firm failure. Key to successful restructuring is financing (called DIP financing) in the interim period during which the corporation is attempting to develop a viable business plan that is acceptable to stakeholders. Canadian courts have exercised their inherent jurisdiction to grantsuch financing. A recent case before the Supreme Court of Canada settled. However, there continue to be challenges to the courts'jurisdiction. This article suggests that the degree of uncertainty created by the courts' granting of DIP financing has been exaggerated and that …

Bankruptcy, W.H. Drake Jr., Christopher S. Strickland

Mercer Law Review

Undeniably, 1999 proved to be an important year for bankruptcy in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, with the circuit ultimately producing eleven opinions bearing upon the debt relief process. In keeping with the cosmopolitan nature of bankruptcy practice, these decisions involved the court's performance of diversified tasks, ranging from the interpretation of intricate Bankruptcy Code provisions to the construction of governing requirements from the Uniform Commercial Code and the resolution of potential conflicts between the bankruptcy process and various constitutional or state law provisions. Provided below is an overview of each decision rendered during 1999.

International Bankruptcy: In Defense Of Universalism, Andrew T. Guzman

Michigan Law Review

The globalization of business activity is rightfully celebrated as one of the triumphs of the second half of the twentieth century. The benefits stemming from the globalization of commerce are substantial, but international transactions also bring with them important challenges for the world's legal systems. Traditionally, national governments could focus on their domestic economies without undue attention to international issues. Today, however, a country's policymakers must respond to the growth in international business activity with appropriate legal changes. Failure to do so will cause their legal regimes to fall further and further out of step with the needs of the …

The Case For Cooperative Territoriality In International Bankruptcy, Lynn M. Lopucki

Michigan Law Review

Universalism - the idea that a multinational debtor's "home country" should have worldwide jurisdiction over its bankruptcy - has long had tremendous appeal to bankruptcy professionals. Yet, the international community repeatedly has refused to adopt conventions that would make universalism a reality. In an article published last year, I proposed an explanation. Universalism can work only in a world with essentially uniform laws governing bankruptcy �nd priority among creditors - a world that does not yet exist. Because it is impossible to fix the location of a multinational company in a global economy, the introduction of universalism in current world …

Resolving Transnational Insolvencies Through Private Ordering, Robert K. Rasmussen

Michigan Law Review

There is no international bankruptcy law. No question, there are international insolvencies. Transnational firms, just like domestic ones, often cannot generate sufficient revenue to satisfy their debt obligations. Their financial distress creates a situation where assets and claimants are scattered across more than one country. But there is no international law that provides a set of rules for resolving the financial distress of these firms. The absence of any significant free-standing international bankruptcy treaty means that a domestic court confronted with the domestic part of a transnational enterprise has to decide which nation's domestic bankruptcy law will apply to which …

A Global Solution To Multinational Default, Jay Lawrence Westbrook

Michigan Law Review

A new world is slouching toward New York and London, Beijing and Bangkok, to be born. If our planet and our values survive the secondary effects of that emergence, we may look forward to a humanity more prosperous and more integrated than at any time in human history. The force that drives us to that future is free-market capitalism constrained in the vessel of democratic institutions. One important element in its progress is the fashioning of an international system for managing the financial crises that are one of the free market's inevitable consequences. In this symposium, we debate which is …

Textualism's Failures: A Study Of Overruled Bankruptcy Decisions, Daniel J. Bussel

Vanderbilt Law Review

Judges and legal scholars are engaged in a contentious, wide- ranging, and long-running debate over methods of statutory interpretation. Stripping the debate of some of its nuance without misrepresenting its essence, there are two camps: the "textualists" and the "pragmatists." Cass Sunstein recently argued that the question of interpretive method should be considered in light of evidence whether textualist methods work better or worse than pragmatic ones. To date, however, only limited empirical evidence has been systematically brought to bear on this question.

This Article presents new empirical evidence gleaned from twenty years of interpretation of the United States Bankruptcy …

On The Nature Of Federal Bankruptcy Jurisdiction: A General Statutory And Constitutional Theory, Ralph Brubaker

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Regulating Or Reorganizing?: Depriving Federal Bankruptcy Courts Of Their Statuory Authority And Misapplying Fundamental Tenets Of Bankruptcy Law In In Re Cajun Electric Power Cooperative, Inc., Scott Kent Brown Ii

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Judicial Abuse Of "Process": Examining The Applicability Of Section 2f1.1(B)(4)(B) Of The Federal Sentencing Guidelines To Bankruptcy Fraud, Hideaki Sano

Michigan Law Review

The proliferation of bankruptcy filings over the past decade has coincided with a comparable increase in the incidence of bankruptcy fraud. In response to this growing problem, the United States Department of Justice has placed greater emphasis on federal prosecution of bankruptcy fraud. As a result, federal judges are increasingly applying the Federal Sentencing Guidelines ("Guidelines") to bankruptcy fraud and have begun to implement uniform standards for sentencing defendants convicted of this crime. Congress enacted the Guidelines pursuant to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. In instituting the Guidelines, Congress sought honesty, reasonable uniformity, and proportionality in sentencing. Congress attempted …

The Locus Of Lawmaking: Uniform State Law, Federal Law, And Bankruptcy Reform, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Insider Guaranties In Bankruptcy: A Framework For Analysis, Marshall E. Tracht

Articles & Chapters

This article presents an economic analysis of insider guaranties in small business finance and bankruptcy, explaining their role in the panoply of legal and contractual devices used to control financial agency costs. It then uses this model to examine two areas of concern in the bankruptcy treatment of insider guaranties (the Deprizio preference problem and the enforceability of springing and exploding guaranties) and to explore some of the wider implications of insider guaranties for small business bankruptcy. Building on the fact that insider guaranties are typically used less to increase the assets available for repayment of the debt than to …

Will Exploding Guaranties Bomb?, Marshall E. Tracht

Articles & Chapters

Springing and exploding guaranties - insider guaranties that will become due ifand when a borrower files for bankruptcy - have become popular as "bankruptcy-proofing" devices, yet there is little case law or literature on their enforceability. This article reviews the limited existing law on these bankruptcy-contingent guaranties and examines some of the arguments against their enforceabiltiy that can be expected to be made in the future.

Bank Of America V. 203 North Lasalle Street Partnership: Cram Down Without Debtor Exclusivity--Good Or Bad For The Creditor?, Ann E. Nolan

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Legal Regulation Of Hedge Funds In The United States Long-Term Capital Management Episode, Jong Cheol Park

LLM Theses and Essays

Mutual funds and hedge funds are popular forms of investment in the United States and throughout the world. Mutual funds are regulated by securities' regulators in the United States. Hedge funds, however, are not regulated because of their operational flexibility in investment. U.S. regulators are concerned that if they regulate hedge funds, hedge funds will, along with their economic benefits, emigrate to offshore havens. However, if we consider the importance of the American financial markets in the world, this idea can be dismissed. Due to globalization in the capital markets, small events in the United States can have large effects …

The Use Of Intellectual Property As Collateral: Gap In The Perfection Of A Security Interest, Sofia Benammar

LLM Theses and Essays

The purpose of the present thesis is to let French lawyers know which step they need to take in order to best assist their client in securing a more solid investment. Lenders want to be protected. Lenders want to be sure that they can use the intellectual property rights in a commercial environment free from superior claims by third parties. In other words, a lender who provides a large loan to a borrower wants to know how and where its security interest will be perfected and what is the best way for him to have priority over other claims. This …

Interpreting The Bankruptcy Code: An Empirical Study Of The Supreme Court's Bankruptcy Decisions, Karen Gebbia

Publications

The Supreme Court has issued forty-eight bankruptcy decisionsin the two decades since the Bankruptcy Code became law. In at least thirty of these cases, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to mediate conflicts among the circuit courts of appeal.

This article studies the Court's interpretive methods. Studies of lower court bankruptcy decisions might also provide valuable information concerning interpretive method, particularly if such studies examine whether conflicting decisions arise from conflicting interpretive methods, whether appellate courts and bankruptcy courts apply divergent interpretive methods, and whether textual or non-textual decisions are more frequently overruled by higher courts or legislative action.

Bank Of America National Trust & Savings Ass'n V. 203 North Lasalle Street Partnership: A Different Interpretation, Karen Gebbia

Publications

The story of 203 North LaSalle Street is archetypical of real estate investments. A real estate investment partnership that had no other significant assets owned a substantial part of the 203 North LaSalle Street building, just as thousands of other real estate partnerships own thousands of other downtown office buildings across the United States. Like hundreds of other single asset real estate partnerships, the 203 North LaSalle Street Partnership fell upon financial hard times and filed a chapter 11 reorganization case to prevent the mortgagee from foreclosing on the building. As in many such cases, the financially decimated partners sought …

The Lease Of Money In Bankruptcy: Time For Consistency?, Laura B. Bartell

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Analogical Reasoning As Translation: The Pragmatics Of Transitivity, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

This paper attempts to examine the underlying structure of analogical reasoning in decision making. The immediate (but not exclusive) context is the form of reasoning commonly seen as prevalent in common-law judicial decision making. Following Wittgenstein and Strawson the paper identifies the problem of the contingency of transitivity of analogical relations as a serious impediment to analogical reasoning. It then proceeds to offer a method of translation that delineates the borders of contingency and analyticity of transitivity in such cases, as well as proposes how these borders may be manipulated. The theoretical insight is to treat analogical relations anaphorically, as …

What Is Contract Law 'About'? Speech Act Theory And A Critique Of 'Skeletal Promises', Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

What is contract law about? One way of looking at it is to conceive of the subject-matter of contract law in terms of promises - just as tort law arguably revolves around the concepts of accident or harm. Much like accidents - first-year law students are taught - promises are out there in the world, to be classified and distinguished so as to privilege some with legal enforceability. There is a language/world of promises, this approach seems to indicate, and a language/world of contracts. It is a main function of contract law to perform translations from the one to the …

Licensing Intellectual Property And Technology From The Financially-Troubled Or Startup Company: Prebankruptcy Strategies To Minimize The Risk In A Licensee's Intellectual Property And Technology Investment, Richard M. Cieri, Michelle M. Harner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Getting To Waiver – A Legislative Solution To State Sovereign Immunity In Bankruptcy After Seminole Tribe, Laura B. Bartell

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Wasted Sacrifice Of Lessors' Lost Profit Claims In Bankruptcy, Marie T. Reilly

Journal Articles

Bankruptcy Code section 502(b)(6) sets the maximum allowable amount of a real property lessor's claim for damages arising for breach of lease in a tenant's bankruptcy case. To the extent a lessor's damages claim under nonbankruptcy law exceeds the maximum amount, it is disallowed. The implicit premise for such disallowance is that real property lessors' damages claims are less worthy of respect in bankruptcy than other claims for damages against the debtor. Real property leases are legally distinct from leases of personal property or other contractual relationships that allocate property rights. But, it does not obviously follow from the distinction …

Introduction To The Articles Presented By Three Rising Stars In Bankruptcy Scholarship, Samuel Bufford

Journal Articles

Bankruptcy law is one of the fundamental legal structures necessary to the functioning of a market economy. In the common law tradition of the United States and England, bankruptcy law dates back to 1542. Bankruptcy law's origins are even more ancient, with roots extending back to at least the Hammaurabi Code and the Law of Moses. In the transition to market economies and Western-style legal systems in Central and Eastern Europe, the development of a viable bankruptcy law is one of the first priorities. This, the United States bankruptcy law that forms the background for this symposium is central to …

Another Way Of Thinking About Section 105(A) And Other Sources Of Supplemental Law Under The Bankruptcy Code, David G. Epstein

Law Faculty Publications

In this article we discuss the role of 105 in bankruptcy law generally rather than in specific bankruptcy cases. We mention a few cases as examples. Mainly, we aim at 105. We work toward an understanding of this section that explains our view of the bottom issue that determines the proper role and use of 105 and also the proper role and use of supplemental law generally.

Vern Countryman And The Path Of Progressive (And Populist) Bankruptcy Scholarship, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Vern Countryman was the leading progressive bankruptcy scholar - and in fact the leading bankruptcy scholar of any perspective. This article explores the links between Countryman's work and that of his New Deal predecessors, on the one hand, and his successors, on the other. In addition to Countryman himself, the article focuses on William Douglas, who was Countryman's predecessor and mentor, as well as being the leading bankruptcy scholar of the New Deal. Among Countryman's successors, the article focuses on the work of Elizabeth Warren, Countryman's successor at Harvard Law School and the nation's leading …

Russia's Intactable Economic Problems And The Next Steps In Legal Reform: Bankruptcy And The Depoliticization Of Business , William P. Kratzke

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Law reform in Russia proceeds on many fronts. This paper takes the position that the most important legal reforms for Russia are those that eliminate the reward system that encourages economic activity that can be highly inefficient. These legal reforms are an effective bankruptcy law and the de-politicization of business. The two go hand-in-hand. It is the politicization of business that renders Russia's bankruptcy laws ineffective by making non-viable business entities .appear to be solvent. These two reforms, were they adequately implemented, would eliminate rewards for inefficiency. Only when the Russian government-and its people-have removed this reward system can conditions …

The Administrative Relationship Between The District And Bankruptcy Courts, William W. Schwarzer, Neil Mcgaraghan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.