Bankruptcy Law Commons^™

Giving Back A Fraudulent Transfer: A Defense To Liability?, David G. Carlson

Articles

In Whitlock v. Lowe (In re Deberry) (5th Cir. 2019), the Fifth Circuit court of appeals found it obvious that if a transferee gives back fraudulently transferred funds (which the debtor then dissipates), the transferee has a complete defense to liability to the transferor’s bankruptcy trustee. This puts the Fifth Circuit at odds with the Sixth and Seventh Circuits, where the prepetition give-back counted as no defense. This article concludes that a more nuanced position should mediate between these extremes, based on an “innocent donee” defense retrieved from Nineteenth Century precedent. The article emphasizes that if bad faith transferees for …

Bankruptcy’S Role In The Covid-19 Crisis, Edward R. Morrison, Andrea C. Saavedra

Faculty Scholarship

Policymakers have minimized the role of bankruptcy law in mitigating the financial fallout from COVID-19. Scholars too are unsure about the merits of bankruptcy, especially Chapter 11, in resolving business distress. We argue that Chapter 11 complements current stimulus policies for large corporations, such as the airlines, and that Treasury should consider making it a precondition for receiving government-backed financing. Chapter 11 offers a flexible, speedy, and crisis-tested tool for preserving businesses, financing them with government funds (if necessary), and ensuring that the costs of distress are borne primarily by investors, not taxpayers. Chapter 11 saves businesses and employment, not …

Grab The Fire Extinguisher Comparing Uk Schemes Of Arrangement To U.S. Corporate Bankruptcy After Jevic, David S. Stevenson

Cleveland State Law Review

Corporations overwhelmed with debt frequently turn to the courts for help to restructure their credit obligations, but some courts are more helpful than others. This is especially true when creditors cannot agree on a particular resolution, let alone when some creditors will not be paid at all. International corporations often have a choice of forum—and substantive insolvency law—based on their legal and physical presence in dozens or even hundreds of countries. The UK and U.S. offer different avenues for using insolvency law to restructure debts without total liquidation, and the American avenue has become more difficult to navigate thanks to …

Bankruptcy's Cathedral: Property Rules, Liability Rules, And Distress, Vincent S.J. Buccola

Northwestern University Law Review

What justifies corporate bankruptcy law in the modern economy? For forty years, economically oriented theorists have rationalized bankruptcy as an antidote to potential coordination failures associated with a company’s financial distress. But the sophistication of financial contracting and the depth of capital markets today threaten the practical plausibility, if not the theoretical soundness, of the conventional model. This Article sets out a framework for assessing bankruptcy law that accounts for changes in the technology of corporate finance. It then applies the framework to three important artifacts of contemporary American bankruptcy practice, pointing toward a radically streamlined vision of the field. …

Unlimited Liability For Banks: Deposits As Fraudulent Transfers, Katherine Zampas

St. Mary's Law Journal

One of a trustee’s most valuable resources in bankruptcy proceedings is his avoidance powers. A trustee is charged with the duty to recover and recapture any property wrongfully removed from the estate by way of fraudulent transfer or preference. In some cases, a trustee has attempted to treat a debtor’s deposit into a bank account as a transfer, rendering it subject to his avoidance powers. Such a result will leave banks collaterally responsible as a transferee for a debtor’s conduct despite their lack of culpability and control over the funds.

The definition of transfer within the Bankruptcy Code is comprehensive …

Members Only: Can A Trustee Govern An Llc When Its Member Files For Bankruptcy?, Theresa J. Pulley Radwan

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Limited-liability entities allow owners to limit their personal risk similar to shareholders of a corporation while enjoying the ability to operate the business more in the manner traditionally used for a partnership. These attributes have made these business forms increasingly popular business over the past few decades because they offer the best of partnership world—control and pass-through taxation—while also offering the best of corporate world—limited liability to all of its owners. But if financial problems arise for these businesses and their owners, bankruptcy may be the final option to remedy financial difficulties. The current bankruptcy code, adopted at the same …

Cacs And Doorknobs, Anna Gelpern, Jeromin Zettelmeyer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In response to debt crises, policy makers often feature Collective Action Clauses (CACs) in sovereign bonds among the pillars of international financial architecture. However, the content of official pronouncements about CACs suggests that CACs are more like doorknobs: a process tool with limited impact on the incidence or ultimate outcome of a debt restructuring. We ask whether CACs are welfare improving and, if so, whether they are pillars or doorknobs. The history of CACs in corporate debt suggests that CACs can be good, bad or unimportant depending on their vulnerability to abuse and the available alternatives, including bankruptcy and debt …

Bankruptcy’S Class Act: Class Proofs Of Claim In Chapter 11, Tori Remington

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

When a business files for protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it must begin to pay off its debt by reorganizing or liquidating its assets. Oftentimes, both processes include terminating employees to reduce the business’s expenditures. As a result of these terminations, former employees might file a “class proof of claim” against the business to preserve any claims of unpaid wages or violations of federal law.

Whether a group may file a class proof of claim against a debtor in bankruptcy remains unclear. The Tenth Circuit has rejected the class proof of claim in bankruptcy. The remaining circuit courts that have …

Mere Conduit, David G. Carlson

Articles

"Mere conduit" is a legal fiction in fraudulent transfer and other avoidance cases. This article argues that the legal fiction is misleading, unnecessary and rendered obsolete by the Supreme Court's recent opinion in Merit Management Group v. FTI Consulting, Inc. (2018). The article further contends that a huge majority of leading cases confound fraudulent transfer law with the law of corporate theft. This error leads to depriving financial intermediaries of their opportunity to avoid liability on the ground of being bona fide transferees for value. Finally, courts often mistake banks as initial transferees of fraudulent transfers (absolutely liable in spite …

Do Payday Loans Cause Bankruptcy?, Paige M. Skiba, Jeremy Tobacman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

An estimated ten million American households borrow on payday loans each year. Despite the prevalence of these loans, little is known about the effects of access to this form of short-term, high-cost credit. We match individual-level administrative records on payday borrowing to public records on personal bankruptcy, and we exploit a regression discontinuity to estimate the causal impact of access to payday loans on bankruptcy filings. Though the size of the typical payday loan is only $300, we find that loan approval for first-time applicants increases the two-year Chapter 13 bankruptcy filing rate by 2.48 percentage points. There appear to …

Relational Preferences In Chapter 11 Proceedings, Brook E. Gotberg

Faculty Publications

It is no secret that creditors hate so-called "preference" actions, which permit a debtor to recover payments made to creditors on the eve of bankruptcy for the benefit of the estate. Nominally, preference actions are intended to equalize the extent to which each unsecured creditor must bear the loss of a bankruptcy discharge, or to discourage creditors from rushing to collect from the debtor in such a way that will push an insolvent debtor into bankruptcy. But empirical evidence strongly suggests that, at least in chapter 11 reorganization proceedings, preference actions do not fulfill either of these stated goals. Interviews …

Predicting Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Case Outcomes Using The Federal Judicial Center Idb And Ensemble Artificial Intelligence, Warren E. Agin, Gill Eapen

Georgia State University Law Review

In this project, the authors obtained public data on over 100,000 Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases and used machine and deep-learning methodologies to explore whether models could be designed to predict Chapter 11 case outcomes. The data used was obtained from the Federal Judicial Center’s bankruptcy Integrated Database and included information about case filing dates, the court where the case was filed, the type of business entity, and basic information about assets and liabilities. Using this information, the authors initially sought to predict whether a particular case was dismissed, converted to another Chapter under the Bankruptcy Code, or closed with a …

Sec V. Creditors: Why Sec Civil Enforcement Practice Demonstrates The Need For A Reprioritization Of Securities Fraud Claims In Bankruptcy, Sean Kelly

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Note examines how this tension has motivated the SEC to use receiverships as a preferred vehicle to maximize recovery for defrauded security holders and, in the process, create what amounts to an SEC-run bankruptcy proceeding. The use of these receiverships has triggered a high-stakes race to the courthouse among the SEC and creditors, where mere hours can be the difference between millions in recovery and nothing at all. To end this costly race, this Note proposes a solution that seeks to harmonize securities fraud enforcement with bankruptcy law, which starts with revisiting Bankruptcy Code § 510(b) to reprioritize …

Fiduciary Principles In Bankruptcy And Insolvency, John A.E. Pottow

Book Chapters

This chapter examines fiduciary duties in bankruptcy and insolvency, focusing on the bankruptcy trustee’s duties, which are triggered by virtue of appointment in a case. It first provides a background on bankruptcy law in order to elucidate the doctrines and rules affecting fiduciary responsibilities in bankruptcy, citing a number of relevant provisions in the Bankruptcy Code. It then considers the fiduciary, non-fiduciary, and anti-fiduciary obligations of the trustee under the Bankruptcy Code before discussing the fiduciary duties of care and loyalty. In particular, it highlights bankruptcy-related issues raised by the duty of loyalty with respect to secured creditors, priority unsecured …

Reforming Institutions: The Judicial Function In Bankruptcy And Public Law Litigation, Kathleen G. Noonan, Jonathan C. Lipson, William Simon

Indiana Law Journal

Public law litigation (PLL) is among the most important and controversial types of dispute that courts face. These civil class actions seek to reform public agencies such as police departments, prison systems, and child welfare agencies that have failed to meet basic statutory or constitutional obligations. They are controversial because critics assume that judicial intervention is categorically undemocratic or beyond judicial expertise.

This Article reveals flaws in these criticisms by comparing the judicial function in PLL to that in corporate bankruptcy, where the value and legitimacy of judicial intervention are better understood and more accepted. Our comparison shows that judicial …

Bankruptcy, Morality & Student Loans: A Decade Of Error In Undue Hardship Analysis, Linn White

Ohio Northern University Law Review

In an effort to stem perceived abuses of the bankruptcy system, Congress adopted a rule in 1976 that created a time-based conditional limitation on the discharge of federally guaranteed student loans in bankruptcy. The only means of overcoming the limitation was the showing of an “undue hardship,” which was undefined by the legislature. This gave rise to two judicially created, means-based tests that were used to determine if the debtor was attempting to abuse the bankruptcy system. By the time the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) was enacted, the time-based restriction was gone, leaving only …

Venezuela Undermines Gold Miner Crystallex's Attempts To Recover On Its Icsid Award, Sam Wesson

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Puerto Rico Debt Restructuring: Origins Of A Constitutional And Humanitarian Crisis, Elizabeth Whiting

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Under A Confirmed Chapter 11 Plan A Liquidating Trustee May Have Sole Authority To Review And Object To Claims, Ryan C. Beil

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

A liquidating trust is one that is organized for the primary purpose of liquidating and distributing the assets transferred to it. When a plan under chapter 11 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) is confirmed and establishes a liquidating trust, the trust is treated as a distinct entity. The liquidating trust terminates the debtor in possession’s status and conveys the estate’s rights and assets to a “liquidating trustee.” The confirmed plan does not simply substitute the trustee for the debtor-in-possession, but rather it creates a separate and distinct trust, holding certain property of the …

A Non-Profit Entity May Not Be Substantively Consolidated With An Affiliated Debtor, Rachel Armely

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

To date, over 19,000 sexual abuse claims, totaling claims in an aggregate amount of more than $4 billion, have been filed against individual dioceses within the Catholic Church. This influx of claims comes as the result of certain state legislatures allowing individuals with previously time-barred claims to bring civil lawsuits against the dioceses. Consequently, at least eighteen Catholic dioceses have filed voluntary petitions for relief under title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”).

In many cases, the majority of the Catholic dioceses’ assets are held by inter-related, non-profit Catholic entities that often collectively hold billions of …

Involuntary Bankruptcy Cases And Discretionary “For Cause” Dismissals, Jp Amato

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Exceprt)

This article addresses whether a bankruptcy court has the discretionary power to dismiss an involuntary bankruptcy case filed under chapters 7 or 11 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) for cause when there is a finding of bad faith or a lack of good faith on behalf of the petitioning creditor or creditors. In short, it is unclear because there is insufficient authority on this issue in the involuntary context, and the issue remains split among the courts in the voluntary context.

This article first addresses the statutory requirements of an involuntary petition. Next, …

Foreign Third-Party Releases May Be Enforced Under Principles Of Comity, Jennifer Delasco

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

Chapter 15 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) provides a mechanism for a foreign debtor or a foreign representative to seek recognition of a foreign insolvency, liquidation, or bankruptcy proceeding and the enforcement of a foreign court’s orders issued in such proceedings in the United States. A foreign bankruptcy proceeding or plan may contain “provisions that release non-debtors, such as officers, directors, shareholders, or non-debtor affiliates, from claims and causes of action held by creditors or other non-debtor parties.” There is a split in the United States courts as to whether such a third-party …

Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Proceedings May Be Sufficiently “Unusual” To Render Forum-Selection Clauses Unenforceable, James A. Goodridge

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

The strong policy in favor of centralizing bankruptcy disputes in a single forum often overrides the deference typically owed to the enforceability of the enforceability of forum-selection clauses (“FSC”). As such, with the exception of the Seventh and Tenth Circuits, FSCs are less likely to be enforced in bankruptcy cases, especially when the pending claim is constitutionally core. This memorandum explores the treatment of FSCs in bankruptcy cases. Section I discusses bankruptcy courts’ strong presumption for centralized proceedings; Section II examines the treatment of FSC when the matter is core; and Section III reviews the rejection of the “core …

The Standard For Taking A Security Interest In Fixtures, Mark J. Lobiondo

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

Creditors that have a security interest in the same collateral will often dispute the priority of each other’s liens. In general, the security interest that is first perfected will be entitled to priority over subsequent liens. A security interest is generally perfected by filing a financing statement that satisfies the requirements of section 9-502 of the UCC. Section 9-502 provides that a financing statement is sufficient only if it: (1) provides the name of the debtor; (2) provides the name of the secured party or a representative of the secured party; and (3) indicates the collateral covered by the …

A Trustee Generally May Not Recover An Actual Fraudulent Transfer If The Funds Have Been Reimbursed To The Debtor Pre-Petition, Carina Zupa

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

Section 544 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) grants a trustee the power to “avoid any transfer of property of the debtor or any obligation incurred by the debtor that is voidable by” certain classes of secured creditors, unsecured creditors, and bona fide purchasers. When seeking to avoid a transfer a trustee can look to various other provisions of the Bankruptcy Code, including: 11 U.S.C. § 545 (statutory liens), 11 U.S.C. § 547 (preferences), 11 U.S.C. § 548 (fraudulent transfers), 11 U.S.C. § 549 (post-petition transactions), 11 U.S.C. § 553(b) (impermissible setoffs), and 11 …

Exploring The Scope Of The Property Requirement Of Section 109(A) In Chapter 11 And 15 Cases, Rasha El Mouatassim Bih

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

Section 109 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) provides that “only a person that resides or has a domicile, a place of business, or property in the United States . . . may be a debtor.” In In re Barnet, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that debtor eligibility requirements of section 109 apply to a debtor in recognition proceedings under chapter 15. If a debtor does not have a domicile or place of business in the United States, as is often the case with foreign debtors, then …

Selling A Vessel Free And Clear Of A Maritime Lien Pursuant To Section 363 Of The Bankruptcy Code, Aram Movaseghi

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

Under title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”), a debtor in possession or trustee may sell property of the debtor’s estate. However, a lien on a maritime vessel may make such a sale challenging, in particular because of jurisdictional issues. When a debtor’s assets become subject to the jurisdiction of both admiralty and bankruptcy cases, a complex conundrum arises. Maritime bankruptcies have generated complex legal issues and jurisdictional conflicts that have perplexed practitioners and implicated significant constitutional issues.

Under section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code, a debtor or trustee may seek authority from the court to …

Court’S Ability To Modify Or Terminate A Prior Recognition Order Under §1517(D) Of The Bankruptcy Code, Kristopher Peters

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

Chapter 15 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) governs the process for obtaining recognition of foreign insolvency proceedings in the U.S. Section 1517 governs recognition of foreign proceedings and addresses two distinct, but related, issues: (1) whether a court must recognize a foreign court’s foreign proceeding; and (2) whether a court may modify or terminate a prior recognition of a foreign proceeding. This memorandum analyzes the second issue, which is governed by §1517(d) of the Bankruptcy Code.

This memorandum first examines the scope of §1517(d) and whether and when a court may modify or …

Asset Partitioning And Financial Innovation, Christopher Bruner

Scholarly Works

Review of the article by Ofer Eldar and Andrew Verstein titled “The Enduring Distinction between Business Entities and Security Interests”, 92 Southern California Law Review, no. 2 (2019).

"Undue Hardship" And Uninsured Americans: How Access To Healthcare Should Impact Student-Loan Discharge In Bankruptcy, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

Student-loan debt has grown to unprecedented heights. Contributing to the severe burden imposed by these debts is the Bankruptcy Code’s unique presumption that they are not dischargeable. To overcome that presumption, a debtor must establish that repayment of her loans would constitute an “undue hardship.” This essay examines the disagreement among bankruptcy courts that have interpreted the “undue hardship” standard in situations where a debtor is unable to afford health insurance—a common occurrence among the economically disadvantaged. After examining recent healthcare reforms, I argue that Congress has expressed a judgment that all Americans should obtain minimum essential healthcare. Though this …