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More "Picks of the Month" … This post includes published articles from November, 2006 that might be of interest to the bankruptcy practitioner, scholar, student, and Judge:
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Continue Reading Picks of the Month: Required Bankruptcy Reading for November 2006
Time to catch up on the ever-popular "Picks of the Month." This post covers my picks for October 2006:
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Continue Reading Picks of the Month: Required Bankruptcy Reading for October 2006
The following finance bankruptcy-related papers, arranged by abstract ID number, can be downloaded from the Social Science Research Network:
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Rice University’s Evgeny Lyandres and George Mason University’s Alexei Zhdanov: "Investment Opportunities and Bankruptcy Prediction." (Abstract ID: 946240)
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Univ. of Minnesota’s Timothy J. Kehoe and UCLA’s David K. Levine: "Bankruptcy and Collateral in Debt Constrained Markets" (Abstract ID: 940605)
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Univ. of Chicago’s Arthur G. Korteweg: "The Costs of Financial Distress across Industries" (Abstract ID: 945425)
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NYU’s Edward I. Altman and Brent Pasternack: "Defaults and Returns in the High Yield Bond Market: The Year 2005 in Review and Market Outlook" (Abstract ID: 943326)
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IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG’s Lutz Hahnenstein and Univ. of Regensburg’s Klaus Roder: "Who Hedges More When Leverage is Endogenous? A Testable Theory of Corporate Risk Management under General Distributional Conditions" (Abstract ID: 934589)
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IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG’s Lutz Hahnenstein and Univ. of Regensburg’s Klaus Roder: "Corporate Hedging and Capital Structure Decisions: Towards an Integrated Framework for Value Creation" (Abstract ID: 934580)
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Univ. of York’s Marco Realdon: "Pricing the Credit Risk of Secured Debt and Financial Leasing" (Abstract ID: 934616)
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IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG’s Lutz Hahnenstein and Univ. of Regensburg’s Klaus Roder: "The Minimum Variance Hedge and the Bankruptcy Risk of the Firm" (Abstract ID: 934578)
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Abstracts for each of these papers follows:
Bankruptcy and restructuring attracts one who yearns to be a "Renaissance Man" because business failure is everywhere and does not discriminate among industries…including, for example, the rap industry. Indeed, only bankruptcy can prompt one to ask: "Why were the prices for rap/hip-hop slashed [in Tower Records’ bankruptcy sale] vastly more than those of every other genre of music?"
Rap stars, of course, are no strangers to bankruptcy, though generally you won’t find their case without knowing "what their mommas named them." Perhaps the most famous rapper to have gone bankrupt is MC Hammer (a/k/a Stan Burrell), who filed for bankruptcy in 1996 with debts of $14 million, and whose song copyrights were recently sold for $2.7 million. [Hammer is now a blogger, minister, and proud father!]
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Not surprisingly, rappers’ bankruptcies are highly contentious, as demonstrated by the long rap sheets (i.e., bankruptcy dockets) in Hammer’s never-ending case, and–more recently–in the bankruptcy cases of the legendary Death Row Records and its founder Marion "Suge" Knight, Jr.
But, "what goes around, comes around," as the not-so-old saying goes, even (or especially) in the rap business. In 1998, Death Row filed a complaint for nondischargeability against Hammer, and obtained a $1.7 million nondischargeabilty judgment against him. Now, Nathaniel Hale (not the famous spy, but Snoop Dogg’s less-but-still famous cousin Nate Dogg), just filed his own multimillion nondischargeability complaint against Death Row’s founder, who has clearly seen better days.
This long-winded introduction, however, is just by way of background to the real point of this blog post, which is to recap the 11th circuit’s decision this week in Thompkins v. Lil’ Joe Records, Inc., 2007 WL 316302 (11th Cir. 2/5/07) (pdf), which can be boiled down to simply this:
A once successful rap recording company (2 Live Crew Luther Campbell’s acclaimed Luke Records) enters into a contract with a future rap star (Jeff Thompkins, a/k/a JT Money of Poison Clan) in which JT unconditionally transfers all right, title, and interest in his sound recording copyrights to Luke Records in exchange for a "guaranteed" royalty stream. Six years later, in 1995, Luke Records is tied up in chapter 11, where it eventually rejects JT’s contract and transfers the copyrighted sound recordings to Lil’ Joe Records in a "free and clear" bankruptcy sale.
JT subsequently sues Lil’ Joe Records for copyright infringement, claiming that rejection of his executory agreement also rescinded Luke Records’ ownership of the copyrights. The 11th Circuit, however, disagreed and held that ownership rights in the copyrighted song recordings did not revert back to JT upon rejection of the executory portions of the transfer agreement. The 11th Circuit wrote:
[T]he bankruptcy court’s Confirmation Order did not effectively rescind the 1989 Agreement and reverse the executed transfer of the Poison Clan Song copyrights to Luke Records. The rejection had no effect on Luke Records’ ownership of the copyrights, and they passed from the estate to Lil’ Joe under the terms of the Joint Plan and Confirmation Order…. Accordingly, [JT] cannot support a claim of copyright infringement against Lil’ Joe as to the Poison Clan Songs, and we affirm the grant of summary judgment on that claim in favor of Lil’ Joe.
In other words, to quote the rap group Souls of Mischief, "You got f**ked in the industry!"
2/8/07 Update: Be sure to check out Bob Eisenbach’s follow up to this post where he analyzes how novice IP holders can avoid getting f**ked in the industry as poor JT Money just did.
2/22/07 Update: For those more interested in IP issues in bankruptcy, here are two presentations I’m delivering at this scheduled event of the Licensing Executive Society Winter 2007 Meeting in San Francisco:
– and –
© Steve Jakubowski 2007
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The following bankruptcy business-related papers, arranged by abstract ID number, can be downloaded from the Social Science Research Network:
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Stern Stewart & Co.’s Bennett Stewart: "The Real Reasons Enron Failed" (Abstract ID: 943547)
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Arizona State University’s Dahlia Robinson: "Tax Service Fees and Auditor Independence: Evidence from Going-Concern Opinions Prior to Bankruptcy Filings" (Abstract ID: 946418)
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Univ. of Bocconi’s Pietro Garibaldi: "Hiring Freeze and Bankruptcy in Unemployment Dynamics" (Abstract ID: 944869)
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Federal Reserve Board’s Beth Anne Wilson, Daniel M. Covitz, and Song Han: "Are Longer Bankruptcies Really More Costly?" (Abstract ID: 943776)
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The College of Management – School of Law’s Omer Tene: "Revisiting the Creditors’ Bargain: The Entitlement to the Going-Concern Surplus in Corporate Bankruptcy Reorganizations" (Abstract ID: 943066)
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Trinity University’s Barry T. Hirsch: "Wage Determination in the U.S. Airline Industry: Union Power under Product Market Constraints" (Abstract ID: 941127)
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London Business School’s Viral V. Acharya, Univ. of Michigan’s Sreedhar T. Bharath, and National Univ. of Singapore’s Anand Srinivasan: "Does Industry-wide Distress Affect Defaulted Firms? Evidence from Creditor Recoveries" (Abstract ID: 940630)
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Yale Law School’s Alan Schwartz: "Valuation of Collateral" (Abstract ID: 938709)
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Adam Levitin: "Finding Nemo: Rediscovering the Virtues of Negotiability in the Wake of Enron" (Abstract ID: 936253)
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Virginia Polytechnic University’s John C. Easterwood and Vanderbilt University’s Charu G. Raheja: "CEOs vs. Directors: Who Calls the Shots When Firms Underperform?" (Abstract ID: 931037)
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Chapman Univ. School of Law’s Daniel B. Bogart: "Unexpected Gifts of Chapter 11: The breach of a Director’s Duty of Loyalty Following Plan Confirmation and the Postconfirmation Jurisdiction of Bankruptcy Courts" (Abstract ID: 930161)
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Indiana University’s Derek Oler and Univ. of Kansas’s Kevin R. Smith: "The Characteristics and Fate of ‘Take Me Over’ Firms" (Abstract ID: 930389)
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Abstracts for each of these papers follows:
Bankruptcy lawyers often analogize the plan confirmation process to the running of trains, whereby once the so-called "confirmation train leaves the station," it’s very hard — if not impossible — to stop the plan from being confirmed. When does the confirmation train "leave the station"? Typically, when a consensus is reached among the debtor and its major creditor constituents (or classes) over the terms of a reorganization plan. It’s commonly assumed that once that consensus is reached, not even Superman can stop that locomotive from reaching its destination. As the famed late Bankruptcy Judge James E. Yacos of New Hampshire noted when he terminated plan exclusivity in New Hampshire’s largest bankruptcy case ever (In re Public Service of New Hampshire, 99 B.R. 155, 176 (Bankr. D.N.H. 1989)):
Opening up the process to alternative plans in my judgment will serve to quantify and make concrete various ways of resolving those circular questions. I believe it will force the parties to use all of their considerable skills to negotiate resolutions on a fact basis (rather than and ideological basis dealing with unanswered and unanswerable interesting legal questions) under the gun of having the "reorganization train leave the station" before they are aboard.
Adelphia Communications Corporation’s reorganization case has been proceeding for over 4-1/2 years. It was called by Bankruptcy Judge Robert E. Gerber, the presiding judge in the case, "among the most challenging — and contentious — in bankruptcy history." The case involved 230 separate jointly administered entities, generated over 13,000 docket entries in the main bankruptcy case and spawned about 130 separate adversary proceedings (not to mention scores of additional complex and high-profile related securities and criminal proceedings).
As widely reported, on January 3, 2007, Judge Gerber rang in the new year with a 267 page "Bench Decision on Confirmation" that laid the groundwork for entry of an order confirming Adelphia’s "First Modified Fifth Amended Joint Chapter 11 Plan." The opinion, with its comprehensive explanation of key events in Adelphia’s reorganization (including the background to the filing, the restatements of Adelphia’s financials and bankruptcy schedules, the proposed sale of Adelphia’s cable operations to Time Warner/Comcast and the genesis of that deal, the various iterations of the reorganization plans previously proposed, the increasingly complex and hostile negotiations leading to the current plan, asset valuations, and the key points of contention at the confirmation hearing), is a veritable masterpiece (not to mention the lengthiest opinion of record confirming a plan of reorganization). The supporting Confirmation Order, entered two days later, is itself 47 another pages, and incorporates the Bench Decision (and the "Rigas Pay-over Bench Decision") by reference as containing the Court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law.
The primary objector to plan confirmation was the so-called "ACC Bondholder Group," comprised mainly of activist hedge funds, which on the day before Thanksgiving, filed this opening 34 page objection summarizing the group’s primary confirmation objections. The focus of the Bankruptcy Court’s Bench Decision, at its core, is on explaining why the ACC Bondholder Group’s objections should not stop confirmation.
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The ACC Bondholder Group appealed the order of confirmation (submitting this "Statement of Issues and Designation of Record on Appeal"), and the case was assigned to Judge Shira A. Scheindlin, whose previous involvement in various prior unrelated appeals gave her significant familiarity with the procedural preconfirmation dynamics of the case. From the ACC Bondholder Group’s perspective, the selection of Judge Scheindlin to hear the appeal must have been welcome news given her history of supporting the underdog, even at the risk of being reversed by the Second Circuit (as happened in her February 2004 ruling that Maurice Clarett could participate in the 2004 NFL Draft and her April 2002 ruling dismissing perjury charges against an acquaintance of two of the 9/11 hijackers, who she then ordered released from prison after finding his detention legally unjustifiable–and who later, by the way, was acquitted by a unanimous jury, thereby silencing Judge Scheindlin’s fierce critics).
On January 24, 2007, Judge Scheindlin stepped in front of Adelphia’s speeding confirmation train and, in this opinion, single-handedly derailed it by granting the ACC Bondholder Group’s motion to stay the effectiveness of the confirmation order (though the victory must have seemed a pyrrhic one to the victors given the $1.3 billion bond that Judge Scheindlin ordered be posted as a condition to maintenance of the stay).
In granting the stay, Judge Scheindlin said that deciding what to do was "one of the most difficult tasks this Court has yet confronted." What swayed Judge Scheindlin? At root, three things:
While debate rages as to whether legal blogging will ever "cross the chasm," new entrants continue to populate the bankruptcy and litigation blogosphere. First and foremost, however, before welcoming new entrants to the blogosphere, I must pay tribute to one of the pioneers of the blogosphere, Bill Patry of the Patry Copyright Blog (whose blog has been in my blogroll since inception). Bill has just completed one of the most remarkable single achievements by a lawyer in our time; that being a 17 volume, 6,000 page masterpiece on Copyright Law aptly called Patry on Copyright. Remarkably, the project was seven years in the making and every word was written by Bill! Congratulations, Bill! You’re an inspiration for us all!
Congratulations are also in order for Delaware’s "Lou Gehrig" of blogging, Fox Rothchild’s own Francis Pileggi, of the Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog, who in his nearly two years of blogging hasn’t missed reporting on every corporate law case of import from Delaware’s federal and state courts, including on these important bankruptcy-related topics: a bankruptcy trustee’s standing (here and here); duties of an insolvent company’s directors (here, here, and here); deepening insolvency (here, here, here, here, here, and here); D&O indemnity claims (here); arbitration and the automatic stay (here, here, and here); the two dismissal rule (here); legal fees (here); fraudulent transfers (here and here); restrictive covenants in shopping center leases (here); choice of law (here); receivership (here, here, and here); bankruptcy’s effect on Del. appraisal rights (here); sanctions for document destruction in a bankruptcy case (here); and the interface generally between bankruptcy law and corporate law (here).
Now to the newbies I’ve recently added to the blogroll:
Greg Joseph, a great trial lawyer and friend of several who inhabit my firm’s halls, started up the Complex Litigation Blog, focusing on matters pertinent to complex litigation, U.S. and international arbitration, the Federal Rules, and state rules. The blog provides a daily dose of wisdom from one with a sharp eye for what trial lawyers care about.
Lee Barrett, a bankruptcy litigation lawyer with Forshey & Prostok in Fort Worth just started the E-Everything For Bankruptcy Lawyers Blog, focusing on the impact of the electronic revolution on bankruptcy practice and bankruptcy lawyers’ everyday life. Here’s a piece Lee wrote for the State Bar of Texas Bankruptcy Law Section Newsletter entitled E-Discovery and the Commercial Bankruptcy Practitioner: Forget Swimming with the Sharks, Beware of the Nitro Fish!
Those interested in scientific and technical evidentiary issues should subscribe to the Scientic Evidence Blog, published by Cliff Hutchinson of Dallas’ Hughes & Luce.
Chicagoan Mazyar Hedayat moved and renamed his DuPage County Bankruptcy Blog, and continues his up-to-the-minute summaries of significant cases at the Bankruptcy Blog.
Binnacle, LLC, a San Antonio-based consulting group developed a user-friendly site, trollerBk, as a great alternative to the clunky PACER system. Instead of searching district by district and case by case in PACER for cases, motions, briefs, or orders, TrollerBk provides a one-stop shop for searching and retrieving key documents and information for the 62,118 bankruptcy cases in its database. It also provides daily RSS feeds of significant corporate bankruptcy filings of the preceding day. Basic services are provided for free. Premium services command monthly fees that are surely worth the price if you’re a heavy PACER user.
1/26/07 Update: My former law school classmate, and resident class genius, Randy Picker, now a full tenured professor at the law school, started up two new blogs this semester: the Antitrust & IP Policy Seminar Blog and the Network Industries Blog. Here’s a link to Randy’s description of the genesis of the blogs, and of the courses he teaches at the law school (the syllabus and course material links alone make the post worth reviewing). Randy’s first "test" blog back in June 2005 (the "Picker MobBlog"), with its real-time chronicling of the import and subtle nuances of the US Supreme Court’s opinions in Grokster and Brand X, was what turned me on to serious legal blogging, and hooked me from the start. Best wishes for continued success, Randy! Thanks for sharing your thinking and materials with us!
© Steve Jakubowski 2007
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The following comparative bankruptcy-related papers, arranged by abstract ID number, can be downloaded from the Social Science Research Network:
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Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Robert A. Eisenbeis: "Home Country versus Cross-Border Negative Externalities in Large Banking Organization Failure and How to Avoid Them" (Abstract ID: 947093)
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Univ. of Verona’s Andrea Gamba, Mamen Aranda, and Danielle Poiega: "Investment and Credit Risk: A Structural Approach" (Abstract ID: 945968)
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Politécnico Grancolombiano’s Ignacio Velez-Parerja and Univ. of the Andes’s Patricia Rojas: "Some Evidence on Financial Distress Costs and Their Effect on Cash Flows" (Abstract ID: 939731)
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Cornell University’s Robert T. Masson, Yale School of Management’s Heather Tookes, and Samsung’s Yaejong Um: "Firm Diversification and Equilibrium Risk Pooling: The Korean Financial Crisis as a Natural Experiment." (Abstract ID: 938274)
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Clifford Chance LLP’s Tomas Richter: "Two (Further) Possible Explanations of the Secured Debt Puzzle: A Note." (Abstract ID: 929692)
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Boston University School of Law’s Richard Thompson Ainsworth: "A Comparative Assessment of EU, UK, French, Australian and Japanese Responses to Auditor Independence: The Case of Non-Audit Tax Services." (Abstract ID: 928621)
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Catholic University of Louvain’s Juan D. Moreno-Ternero: "Proportionality and Non-Manipulability in Bankruptcy Problems." (Abstract ID: 927763)
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Politechnico Grancolombiano’s Ignacio Velez-Pareja and Univ. of Andes’ Patricia Rojas: "Some Evidence of Financial Distress Costs (Alguna Evidencia sobre los Costos de Dificultadas Financieras)." (Abstract ID: 927328)
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University of Münster’s Alexander Dilger: "Forced to Make Mistakes: Reasons for Complaining about Bebchuk’s Scheme and Other Market-Oriented Insolvency Procedures." (Abstract ID: 926086)
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Catholic University of Leuven’s Nico Dewaelheyns: "Corporate Failure Prediction Modeling: Distorted by Business Groups’ Internal Capital Markets?" (Abstract ID: 924033)
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World Bank’s Xavier Gine and Inessa Love: "Do reorganization costs matter for efficiency? Evidence from a bankruptcy reform in Colombia." (Abstract ID: 923277)
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Max Planck School of Economics’s Eva-Maria Steiger: "Ex-Ante vs. Ex-Post Efficiency in Personal Bankruptcy Proceedings." (Abstract ID: 921540)
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Univ. of Kaiserslautern’s Holger Kraft and Mogens Steffensen: "An ABC Portfolio Choice: Asset Allocation with Bankruptcy and Contagion." (Abstract ID: 921182)
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University of East Anglia’s Andreas Stephan: "The Bankruptcy Wildcard in Cartel Cases." (Abstract ID: 912169)
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Stockholm School of Economics’s Stefano Rossi and Stockholm University’s Nicola Gennaioli: "Bankruptcy, Creditor Protection and Debt Contracts." (Abstract ID: 891154)
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Univ. of Osnabruck’s Jochen Bigus and the Max Planck Institute of Economics’s Eva-Maria Steiger: "When it Pays to be Honest: How a Variable Period of Good Conduct can Improve Incentives in Personal Bankruptcy Proceedings." (Abstract ID: 868365)
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U.S. Court of International Trade’s Robert F. Weber: "Can the Sauvegarde Reform Save French Bankruptcy Law?: A Comparative Look at Chapter 11 and French bankruptcy Law from an Agency Cost Perspective." (Abstract ID: 802944)
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Abstracts for each of these papers follows:
Back from my blogging vacation, during which I instead devoted significant chunks of spare time to bringing current a project I started in 2004 — that of electronically sorting cases, articles, and news stories from the past 3-5 years (now numbering about 10,000) into various topical e-folders in MS-Outlook, thus putting my entire precedent file literally at my fingertips. The quantum leaps in productivity from technology never cease to amaze me! What in the early 90’s absorbed the full-time efforts of two paralegals to assemble and maintain and entire banks of cabinets on high-rent office floors to store, today can be compiled, archived, and retrieved by me alone from the comfort of wherever I’m sitting in 1/50th the time it once took. Remember the sea-change effected not that long ago by the fax, prompting many a young lawyer to ask "what did people ever do without a fax?" How incredibly fast the world has changed! Hopefully, however, Stephen Hawking and his scientist friends are wrong and all this rapid change doesn’t spell our swift destruction!
Anyway, being nearly done with that project — for now — it’s back to blogging. Lots of interesting case developments have passed through my porous sieve, but it’s hard to pass up commenting on today’s salacious front page story in the Wall Street Journal (referenced here) about the collapse of Student Finance Corp. (SFC) and the actions of its counsel, Pepper Hamilton (and partner W. Roderick Gagne in particular).
Most of the article’s central allegations regarding Pepper Hamilton’s culpability rest upon the allegations made in the trustee’s 67 page, first amended complaint. In its 12/22/05 ruling on Pepper Hamilton’s motion to dismiss, however, the Court tossed most of the trustee’s more attenuated claims against Pepper Hamilton (such as deepening insolvency, negligent misrepresentation, and aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty), while leaving intact the trustee’s primary causes of action for breach of fiduciary duty and professional malpractice. Stanziale v. Pepper Hamilton, et. al. (In re Student Finance Corp.), 335 B.R. 539 (D. Del. 2005) (pdf).
The WSJ article concludes that "Pepper Hamilton’s own day in court against the bankruptcy [trustee] … is scheduled for October." In fact, however, if Pepper Hamilton’s latest arguments to the Court succeed, there will be no day in Court for Pepper Hamilton (or if there is, it’ll be a short day), since the guts of the trustee’s complaint will have been eviscerated and there will be little of real substance left to litigate!
What is it that led to Pepper Hamilton’s surge of optimism? None other than the Third Circuit’s recent decision (reviewed at length here) in Seitz v. Detweiler, Hershey & Assocs., P.C. (In re CitX Corp.), 448 F.3d 672 (3d Cir. 5/26/06) (pdf), which (as noted here) arguably went farther than it needed to by "hold[ing], unnecessarily, that deepening insolvency is not a valid theory of damages for other independent torts."
Pepper Hamilton picked up on this theme that CitX (or Seitz) should be broadly construed to apply to other independent torts and within weeks of the decision filed this "omnibus brief" in support of its motion for judgment on the pleadings. In it, Pepper Hamilton advanced the following argument:
Continue Reading The Student Finance Corp. Debacle: Pepper Hamilton’s Court Retort
On December 6, the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts of the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing styled as an "Oversight of the Implementation of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevent and Consumer Protection Act." Witnesses included Clifford J. White III (acting director, Executive Office of U.S. Trustees), the Honorable Randall Newsome (U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California), Professor Todd Zywicki (George Mason Law School), Steve Bartlett (Financial Services Roundtable), David Jones (Ass’n of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies), Professor Bob Lawless (U of I College of Law), and Henry Hillebrand, III (chapter 13 standing trustee in Nashville, Tennessee). [Witness links are to their prepared written statements.]
When it comes to BAPCPA, it’s fair to say that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," as this very old saying goes. Still, I suppose we should be thankful our legislative rules of order don’t comport with those of the Taiwanese, or who knows what the hearing would have degenerated into.
Professor Lawless, no friend of BAPCPA, summarizes the day’s events here (U of I Faculty Blog) and here (Credit Slips Blog). Professor Lawless took Senator Grassley to task for these opening remarks, as well as for openly questioning whether it’s unethical for a judge to criticize BAPCPA. In this regard, it is worth looking at Canon 4 of the Code of Conduct for US Judges, which generally is read to allow judicial commentary on inept laws. As Professor Steven Lubet (author of Lawyers’ Poker: 52 Lessons That Lawyers Can Learn From Card Players and the classic textbook Modern Trial Advocacy) wrote 22 years ago in a monograph published by the American Judicature Society entitled Beyond Reproach: Ethical Restrictions on the Extrajudicial Activities of State and Federal Judges (p.40):**
In the same manner that judges’ charitable and civic activities must not detract from their impartiality, so must their personal lives be free from the suggestion that their judging will be tainted by bias. This is not to say that judges need refrain from forming and expressing opinions. There is no reason to insulate judges from normal human discourse, and there surely is no way to prevent intelligent human beings from developing what Justice Rehnquist calls "an inclination of temperament or outlook." Furthermore, in most cases where a judge’s life actually has evidenced a "tendency or inclination to treat a particular litigant more or less generously than a different litigant raising the identical legal issue" [again quoting Justice Rehnquist], the appropriate remedy is recusal, not prohibition of the conduct which gives rise to the favoritism. It is natural to expect a judge to be "biased" in favor of his or her children; this bias is resolved by disqualifying the judge from sitting in cases involving the children, not by forbidding procreation.
The most disparaging remarks concerning the oversight hearing came from the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA), which pulled no punches in this press release, calling the hearing the Republicans’ "last gasp at one more unbalanced hearing … before Democrats assume control." [NB: Though, as Judge Monroe reminds us here, the vast majority of Democrats weren’t exactly hostile to the new law either.] NACBA President Henry Sommer summed up NACBA’s views of the matter by labeling the "Republican witness line-up" as "the financial world equivalent of the Flat Earth Society" who "have been charged with slapping some lipstick on the pig." Now them’s fightin’ words!
Overall, however, by far the greatest contribution to the day’s proceedings was, naturally, the least publicized: that being, the American Bankruptcy Institute’s submission of the entire 247 page transcript of its October 16 star-studded event at Georgetown University Law Center entitled "A Year After BAPCPA." Thanks to Sam Gerdano and the ABI for making this transcript available to us all! It is outstanding reading! At the end of the day, however, the conclusions reached by event’s moderator, Judge Dennis R. Dow, Bankruptcy Judge for the Western District of Missouri, surely challenge Senator Grassley’s declaration that "[e]arly reports indicate that the law is working well." As Judge Dow said in closing the meeting, "the one thing we can all agree on is that we want this process to work." Yet, as his final remarks reveal, the manifest conclusion thus far is that the law is not working quite as well as Senator Grassley would have us believe. Judge Dow said:
Continue Reading “A Year After BAPCPA”: The Slugfest Continues