Bankruptcy Law Commons^™

Virtual Judgment Proofing: A Rejoinder, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

This is a rejoinder by the author of The Death of Liability, 106 Yale L.J. 1 (1996). The rejoinder is to a reply by Professor James J. White to the original article. Corporate Judgment Proofing: A Response to Lynn LoPucki's The Death of Liability, 107 Yale L.J. 1363 (1998). In response to specific points made by White, LoPucki argues that the judgment proofing of large companies would not be visible in Compustat data because it is not accomplished through secured debt or leasing and because Compustat data is aggregated by corporate group. Contracting parties will permit debtors to judgment proof …

Should The Secured Credit Carve Out Apply Only In Bankruptcy? A Systems/Strategic Analysis, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

National Bankruptcy Review Commission Tax Recommendations: Individual Debtors, Discharge, And Priority Of Claims, Jack F. Williams

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

At The Intersection Of Bankruptcy And Divorce: Property Division Debts Under The Bankruptcy Reform Act Of 1994, Meredith J. Harbach

Law Faculty Publications

Bankruptcy has long had unique implications for divorce settlements and debts between ex-spouses. Historically, some marital debts owed from one ex-spouse to another were excepted from the traditional policy of "discharge. " Bankruptcy law distinguished between debts in the nature of alimony, maintenance, and support, which were protected from discharge, and property division debts, which were not. This distinction often had harsh consequences for creditor ex-spouses. Reeently, Congress enacted the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1994, in part to ameliorate this problem. The amended Bankruptcy Code providP..s better protection for some property division debts. In this Note, Ms. Johnson argues that …

Turning The Microscope On Ourselves: Self-Assessment By Bankruptcy Lawyers Of Potential Conflicts Of Interest In Columbus, Ohio, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This article attempts to devise an appropriate instrument to determine whether bankruptcy lawyers in Columbus, Ohio are able to identify potential conflicts of interest in bankruptcy cases. Although the article is unable to develop an appropriate instrument, it does discuss why the survey method is not appropriate for this type of study.

Desperate Times And Desperate Measures: The Troubled State Of The Ordinary Course Of Business Defense—And What To Do About It, Lawrence Ponoroff

Washington Law Review

The ordinary course of business defense to the bankruptcy trustee's preference avoiding power has been controversial since its enactment in 1978. Burdened with a cryptic legislative history concerning its underlying goals, this preference exception has gone through multiple reinterpretations at the hands of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. In recent years, faced with a potentially expansive reading of the ordinary course defense that threatened to eclipse the rule, courts have used the "ordinary business terms" element of the defense to engraft an objective requirement that the party asserting the defense establish conformity of the challenged transfer with prevailing industry …

The Res Judicata Effect Of Bankruptcy Court Judgments: The Procedural And Constitutional Concerns, George A. Martinez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article seeks to resolve the conflict in the circuits and argues that bankruptcy court judgments should not bar the assertion of non-core claims because to do so violates the basic principles of res judicata and threatens to undermine fundamental Article III values or create judicial inefficiencies in an effort to preserve such values.

Part II of the article provides the relevant Article III background, and identifies the key Article III cases: Northern Pipeline Construction Company v. Marathon Pipe Line Company and Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Schor. This section explores the impact of Northern Pipeline which held that the …

Reorganization A Comparative Study Of Reorganization In Denmark And In The United States, Poul Jagd Mogensen

LLM Theses and Essays

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and discuss a list of specific problems in the current Danish system and in this analysis to examine how these problems are dealt with under the United States laws on reorganization. The thesis consists of five parts in addition to this Introduction. Part II is an introduction to the laws on reorganization in Denmark and in the United States. Part II also includes a brief introduction to out-of-court workouts as an alternative to reorganization under the bankruptcy laws. Part III provides statistical information on the number of reorganizations, the outcome of reorganizations, …

Repose Or Not? Informal Objections To Claims Of Exemptions After Taylor V. Freeland, Kenneth Decourcy Ferguson

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy In The Seventh Circuit: 1996, Douglass G. Boshkoff

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Of Grinches, Alchemy And Disinterestedness: The Commission's Magically Disappearing Conflicts Of Interest, G. Ray Warner

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Christmas 1997 has come and gone. Santa, in the form of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, delivered lots of shiny new toys to the children of bankruptcyland. A few got only switches and lumps of coal, and all of the children wondered whether their new toys would really work.

Mary Megafirm had wanted only one thing from Santa. Over the years, she had grown bigger and bigger, and by now she had pretty much outgrown the old professional qualification rules. She had never much liked that nasty and bothersome "disinterestedness" standard, but in recent years the disinterestedness standard was …

Heavy Duty Ii: Forming A Business Entity In The United States, Aleta Estreicher, Warren Green

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Romanian Bankruptcy Law: A Central European Example, Samuel Bufford

Faculty Scholarship

Romania now has one of the best-drafted bankruptcy laws in Central and Eastern Europe. The new Romanian bankruptcy law went into effect on August 26, 1995 and replaced the previous bankruptcy provisions in §695-987 of the Romanian Commercial Code, which was translated from the Italian Commercial Code of 1884 and enacted in 1887. While the commercial code fell into disuse during the Communist era, it was never repealed. After the Romanian revolution and the demise of Nicolae Ceauşescu at the end of 1989, the commercial code as well as the civil code remained good law and needed only to be …

Strategies For Preserving The Bankruptcy Trustee's Avoidance Power Against States After Seminole Tribe, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

High-Tech Heroes, Virtual Villians, And Jacked-In Justice: Visions Of Law And Lawyers In Cyberpunk Science Fiction, Walter Effross

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Latent Efficiency Of Fraudulent Transfer Law, Marie T. Reilly

Faculty Scholarship

A creditor holding a claim against a debtor typically holds the right, subject to the debtor's default, to obtain a judgment against the debtor, liquidate the debtor's assets, and apply the proceeds against his claim. If the debtor's assets are insufficient to satisfy the creditor's claim, the creditor is usually, but not always, out of luck. Under limited circumstances, a creditor can reach property the debtor transferred to a third party and apply the value of such property to satisfy his claim. The creditor can undo the transfer and obtain the property or its value from the transferee as though …

Foreword (The Sixth Annual Ernst C. Stiefel Symposium), Aleta Estreicher, Karen Gross

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Reconciling The Dormant Conflict: Crafting A Banking Exception To The Fraudulent Conveyance Provision Of The Bankruptcy Code For Bank Holding Company Asset Transfers, Cassandra Jones Havard

All Faculty Scholarship

Banking law and bankruptcy law clash. This is most evident when a bank holding company (parent company) becomes insolvent after it has made an asset transfer to its financially troubled bank subsidiary.

The Bankruptcy Code (Code) governs the insolvency proceedings of the bank holding company. Predictably, the parent company's trustee, appointed for the protection of all the creditors of the bankrupt entity, uses the fraudulent conveyance provision of the Code to have any asset transfers that were made to the bank subsidiary returned to the debtor's estate. The good faith exception to that provision will protect the asset transfer only …

A Case Of Misplaced Priorities: A Proposed Solution To Resolve The Apparent Conflict Between Sections 507 And 1113 Of The Bankruptcy Code, Steven Kropp

Cardozo Law Review

A single corporate bankruptcy is like a pebble thrown into a pond: the ripples keep extending out. Every bankruptcy filing has negative consequences for the corporation's creditors, including its workers. Indeed, a corporate bankruptcy may push many small creditors over the financial brink and even force some of them to file for bankruptcy.

Strategy And Force In The Liquidation Of Secured Debt, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

The question of why parties use secured debt is one of the most fundamental questions in commercial finance. The commonplace answer focuses on force: A grant of collateral to a lender enhances the lender's ability to collect its debt by enhancing the lender's ability to take possession of the collateral by force and sell it to satisfy the debt. That perspective draws considerable support from the design of the major legal institutions that support secured debt: Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code and the less uniform state laws regarding real estate mortgages.

Both of those institutions are designed solely …

The Truth About Secured Financing, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The debate over the social value of secured credit (and the appropriate priority for secured claims in bankruptcy) is entering its nineteenth year. Yet the continuing publication of succeeding generations of articles exploring the topic have yielded precious little in the way of an emerging scholarly consensus about the nature and function of secured credit. Put simply, we still do not have a theory, of finance that explains why firms sometimes (but not always) issue secured debt rather than unsecured debt or equity. Moreover (and perhaps because of the lack of any plausible general theory), we lack any persuasive empirical …

The Virtue Of Speed In Bankruptcy Proceedings, James J. White

Articles

In my opinion the principal difficulty with Chapter 11 is that it gives strong incentives to various Chapter 11 players to distort the priorities that were intended by Congress.

Real Property In Bankruptcy: Some Special Considerations, G. Stanley Joslin

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Steinbach V. Hubbard: Somebody Call An Ambulance! The Fair Labor Standards Act And The Successor Liability Doctrine Have Been Seriously Injured!, Andrew P. Pickering

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of In Re Piper Aircraft Corporation, Tara Adyanthaya

Mercer Law Review

In In re Piper Aircraft Corp., the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals determined when future claimants hold claims within the meaning of section 101(5) of the United States Bankruptcy Code (the "Bankruptcy Code"). Piper Aircraft Corporation filed for bankruptcy and attempted to reorganize under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. Because many Piper aircraft were operational at the time of the filing, it was after confirmation of the reorganization plan, but arising out of or relating to products manufactured, sold, designed, or distributed by Piper prior to confirmation. The bankruptcy court appointed a Legal Representative to protect the interests …

Bankruptcy, W. Homer Drake Jr., Michael M. Duclos

Mercer Law Review

During 1995, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decided seventeen cases in the area of bankruptcy law. These decisions covered a wide variety of issues arising under the Bankruptcy Code,1 and one decision even concerned a case under the old Bankruptcy Act of 1898 ("Bankruptcy Act").2 This article is a survey of the bankruptcy decisions rendered by the Eleventh Circuit in 1995.

Florida's Troubled Phosphate Companies: Can Bankruptcy Law Be Used To Relieve Their Obligation To Reclaim The Land?, Mary Jane Angelo

UF Law Faculty Publications

The conflict that brings us here arises when the earth is disturbed and the environment in which we live is threatened. . . . On the one hand are the corporations who mine phosphate reserves in Florida—their intentions are based on the argument that an ever-shrinking agrarian base in America must have fertilizer to remain effective and productive. On the other hand are the individuals and groups who oppose that mining and their argument is based upon the contention that such mining is too destructive of a unique and very fragile ecosystem.

By the year 2000, phosphate companies will have …

Protective Orders In The Bankruptcy Court: The Congressional Mandate Of Bankruptcy Code Section 107 And Its Constitutional Implications, Michelle M. Harner, William T. Bodoh

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Contempt Of The Bankruptcy Court - A New Look, Laura B. Bartell

Law Faculty Research Publications

With the passage of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978, Congress worked a sweeping revision of the nation's bankruptcy laws. As part of this massive reform measure, Congress reinvented the role of the bankruptcy judge, granting the judge a host of new powers. Because these new powers were so substantial and because Congress elected to establish bankruptcy judges as Article I rather than Article III judges, the Supreme Court, in Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., declared those portions of the Act delineating the powers and structure of the bankruptcy courts unconstitutional. Congress responded by passing the …

Bankruptcy Relief From Secured Tax Liens, Veryl Victoria Miles

Scholarly Articles

This article will discuss the rules of bankruptcy law that are most relevant to the treatment of prepetition secured tax claims. It also will discuss the consequences of these rules and how they affect the various parties to the bankruptcy proceeding: the debtor, the secured tax claimant, and the unsecured creditors.