Bankruptcy Law Commons^™

Baseline Problems In Assessing Chapter 11, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Dealing with failing businesses is like dealing with failing marriages. It is messy. The bigger the business the messier the process is likely to be. Many big business failures in the United States go through their death throes or cure their ills in reorganizations under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Act. As the vehicle in which big business messes travel, Chapter 11 is viewed as unnecessarily complex, time-consuming, and costly. The justification for Chapter 11's very existence has been challenged.

This article suggests that we are blaming the vehicle for the mess that it carries. Much of what is problematic …

University Of Richmond Law Review

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Absolute Priority And New Value, James J. White

Articles

This paper is based on a lecture given on December 6, 1990 ast the Second Annual Robert E. Krinock Lecture. The absolute priority rule is a specific application of the broader doctrine that reorganization plans must be "fair and equitable." Both have their origins in the railroad reorganization cases of the early 20th century. The general doctrine is now codified in section 1129(b)(2) of the Bankruptcy Code and the rule is codified in subsection 1129(b)(2)(B)(ii) which provides that the debtor must pay a nonconsenting class of unsecured creditors in full or "the holder of any claim or interest that is …

Commentary On “On The Nature Of Bankruptcy”: Bankruptcy And Bargaining, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

At a conference on bargaining, it should not be surprising that there is more than one perspective on the relationship between bankruptcy and bargaining. Dean Jackson and Professor Scott's article emphasizes a hypothetical bargain to be struck by idealized participants in a firm. It explores the relationship between bankruptcy and that bargain. By imagining what that bargain would look like, Jackson and Scott construct new justifications for bankruptcy law's distributional rules. Such a theory, however, is subject to reservations about the depth of insight that can be gained from examination of purely theoretical bargains. Stripped of real-world characteristics, hypothetical bargains …

Realization Of Income Through Cancellations, Modifications, And Bargain Purchases Of Indebtedness: I, L. Hart Wright

Michigan Law Review

Treasury regulations bearing on the tax consequence of a cancellation, modification, or bargain purchase of one's outstanding indebtedness date back to those issued in connection with the Revenue Act of 1918. Thirteen years elapsed after their issuance before the Supreme Court in 1931 finally approved, at least with respect to the bargain purchase with which it was concerned, the principal which the regulations incorporated, namely, that the savings effected by such debtors could, as a constitutional as well as a statutory matter, involve the realization of taxable income. Competing interpretations of that decision, the government insisting on a sweeping application …

A Royal Prerogative In The United States, Judson A. Crane

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.