It’s Alive! Critical Vendor Payments Survive Attacks
by: David Conaway
Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP; Charlotte, N.C.
In recent years, trade creditors have been able to escape the dismal outcome of most chapter 11 cases by pursuing “critical vendor” payments. Rather than get stuck with unpaid pre-petition debt, the debtor pays the vendor’s claim after the bankruptcy filing. Of course, this violates one of bankruptcy’s most sacred principles – freezing payments of pre-petition debts to provide the debtor with breathing room to rehabilitate itself. In some cases, debtors have also been willing to waive potential preference claims against critical vendors.
Order Today: Reclamation Manual: Sellers' Rights of Reclamation, Stoppage of Delivery and New Administrative Claim, Second Edition
by: Bruce S. Nathan
Lowenstein Sandler PC; New York and
A task force of members from ABI's Unsecured Trade Creditors' Committee
The new edition, updated to include the 2005 changes to the bankruptcy law, guides lawyers and trade creditors through the exacting requirements that must be satisfied in order to obtain quick relief when either reclamation or stoppage of goods in transit is available as a remedy for unsecured trade creditors, and outlines the steps creditors must follow to successfully exercise these remedies. Softbound, 54 pages.
Order Today: Preference Defense Handbook: The Circuits Compared
by: Deborah Thorne
Barnes & Thornburg LLP; Chicago
David Wheeler
Moore & Van Allen PLLC; Charleston, S.C. and
members of ABI’s Unsecured Trade Creditors Committee
The Handbook is designed to assist practitioners and credit professionals in evaluating the available defenses that may be asserted in a preference avoidance action. Incorporating the important changes made by BAPCPA, the authors review the leading cases in each circuit interpreting the most common defenses and provide a helpful roadmap for those facing preference demands.
2006 Annual Spring Meeting Minutes
The Unsecured Trade Creditors’ and Uniform Commercial Code Committees convened jointly on Saturday, April 22, 2006, at ABI’s Annual Spring Meeting in Washington, D.C. UTCC Co-chairs Deborah Thorne and Bruce Nathan had a short discussion about UTCC’s five active task forces: preference, reclamation, creditors’ committee, listserve and publications/newsletter.
The remainder of the meeting involved a panel discussion on bankruptcy issues that impact trade creditors in automotive cases. The participants included Patrick Mears of Barnes & Thornburg LLP, Jim Gillette of CSM Worldwide, Val Venable of GE Plastics and Hideyuki Sakai of Sakai & Mimura, a Tokyo law firm.