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In Part Two, we continue the analysis by evaluating two constitutional issues arising from third-party releases: whether creditor consent to be bound by a third-party release is required to satisfy the due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments; and whether bankruptcy courts have constitutional authority to issue final orders granting third-party releases in a plan of reorganization under Stern v. Marshall.
In the April 2023 issue, we published Part One of this article examining the role of third-party releases in successful Chapter 11 reorganizations. That article evaluated whether and to what extent third-party releases are permissible to release nondebtors from liabilities that are intertwined with the debtor’s liabilities. That analysis revealed an important circuit split in which the majority of circuits allow third-party releases in limited circumstances based on factual findings supporting a different multi-factor analysis in each jurisdiction. However, a minority of courts — specifically, the Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits — disallow nonconsensual third-party releases entirely. We noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on this issue, and suggested that either the Supreme Court or the U.S. Congress should intervene to resolve the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the use of third-party releases as a tool for resolving complex Chapter 11 restructurings.
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Delaware District Court Could Guide Supreme Court Purdue Pharma Decision
By Michael L. Cook
A bankruptcy court properly held that derivative claims based on “piercing the corporate veil theory of liability [were] released under” a confirmed reorganization plan, but that direct “claims for negligent undertaking” were not released and “could be asserted” in state court against the debtors’ equity sponsors.
Court Caps Landlord's Bankruptcy Claim Against Lease Guarantor
By Andrew C. Kassner and Joseph N. Argentina Jr.
A big issue in real estate and retail bankruptcies, among others, involves the disposition of commercial real estate leases, given the potential magnitude of landlord damage claims under state law resulting from a tenant’s default under a long-term lease.
Delaware Bankruptcy Court Rejects Equity Holder's Challenge to Revoke Confirmation Order
By Lawrence J. Kotler
The equity owner asserted that the confirmation order previously entered by the court should be revoked based on the equity owner’s claim that value was lost due to improper sale and marketing efforts by the debtors and its professionals both pre- and post-bankruptcy and, as such, they should have been “in the money” and entitled to a distribution under the confirmed plan.
By George Williams
One of the major catalysts of the “Crypto Winter” that began in 2022 was the collapse of Terraform Labs’s native token LUNA in May 2022. Now two years and a dozen crypto-related bankruptcies later, Terraform Labs has filed for Chapter 11 protection.