Law Commons^™

When Harry Met Sally: Client Counseling Under Bapcpa, Nathaniel C. Nichols

Nathaniel C. Nichols

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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 …

Parties To International Commercial Arbitration Agreements Beware: Bankruptcy Trumps Supreme Court Precedent Favoring Arbitration Of International Disputes, Lindsay Biesterfeld

Journal of Dispute Resolution

Phillips v. Congelton (In re White Mountain Mining Co.), presents a heightened version of the conflict between the general policy favoring enforcement of arbitration agreements and the policy favoring resolution of bankruptcy-related claims in the bankruptcy court proceedings as the case involves a dispute over the enforcement of an international agreement to arbitrate a claim that is a "core" bankruptcy proceeding. In Phillips, the Fourth Circuit analyzed the underlying purposes of both the bankruptcy code and the federal arbitration statutes, and resolved the conflicting purposes of the two by giving greater deference to the policy favoring resolution of bankruptcy-related claims …

Special Topic Bankruptcy, Robert K. Rassmusen

Vanderbilt Law Review

This issue of the VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW contains two outstanding student pieces on bankruptcy law. Few would be surprised by this observation. As to the quality of the works, they fall in with a long tradition of outstanding student scholarship published by the REVIEW. The choice of topic-bankruptcy law-also does not raise eyebrows. After all, Congress has recently enacted the most sweeping changes to the Bankruptcy Code since its original enactment in 1978. This legislation was the culmination of a more than decade long effort to revise our nation's bankruptcy law. Any major reform effort of this scope surely generates …

Chip Away At The Stone: The Validity Of Pre-Bankruptcy Clauses Contracting Around Section 363 Of The Bankruptcy Code, Matthew P. Goren

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reply To Elizabeth Warren, F. Stephen Knippenberg

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Bankruptcy Ethics Issues For Solos And Small Firms, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This chapter, in Corinne Cooper & Catherine E. Vance's book Attorney Liability in Bankruptcy, walks the reader through some of the traditional ethics issues triggered by representing consumers and small businesses. It also addresses some of the ethics issues that the recent Bankruptcy Amendments (BAPCPA) have created.

Cars And Homes In Chapter 13 After The 2005 Amendments To The Bankruptcy Code, David G. Carlson

Articles

No abstract provided.

Optimizing Consumer Credit Markets And Bankruptcy Policy, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the relationship between consumer credit markets and bankruptcy policy. In general, I argue that the causative relationships running between borrowing and bankruptcy compel a new strategy for policing the conduct of lenders and borrowers in modern consumer credit markets. The strategy must be sensitive to the role of the credit card in lending markets and must recognize that both issuers and cardholders are well placed to respond to the increased levels of spending and indebtedness. In the latter parts of the Article, I recommend mandatory minimum payment requirements, a tax on distressed credit card debt, and the …

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 …

Has Congress Slimmed Down The Hogs?: A Look At The Bapca Approach To Pre-Bankruptcy Planning, Juliet M. Moringiello

Juliet M. Moringiello

No abstract provided.

Is It More Difficult To File For Bankruptcy? Consumer Provisions Of The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention And Consumer Protection Act Of 2005, Juliet M. Moringiello

Juliet M. Moringiello

No abstract provided.