bankruptcy judge

Bankruptcy lawyer urged clients to spread COVID-19, judge says

(Reuters) – A Colorado bankruptcy judge has sanctioned an Edgewater, Colorado lawyer for “blatant misconduct,” including advice he gave former clients to try to infect the trustee overseeing their case with COVID-19 or another illness.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Thomas McNamara on Tuesday suspended attorney Devon Barclay from practicing in Colorado bankruptcy court for three years over his conduct while representing Matthew and Nicole Mennona, a Littleton, Colorado couple who sought Chapter 7 relief during the pandemic.

Barclay forged his clients’ signatures on their Chapter 7 petition, tried to get the bankruptcy case dismissed multiple times under “false assertions of fact,” and ignored a trustee’s discovery efforts, leading to his clients getting hit with a $2,783.50 sanction, McNamara found.

McNamara also cited a Sept. 9, 2021, email from Barclay to his clients about a letter that was intended to be sent to another lawyer. “If either of you have COVID or some other highly infectious, nasty disease — or if you know someone who does — please make sure they lick the envelope and handle it as much as possible,” Barclay said in the email.

It is unclear from the court record whether the comment was meant as a joke. Barclay

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January 19, 2023 by ATTORNEY

FTX could pay over $2,100 per hour for bankruptcy lawyers

By Dietrich Knauth and Andrew Goudsward

(Reuters) – Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has asked a U.S. bankruptcy judge for permission to pay its top restructuring lawyers as much as $2,165 per hour, an unusually high rate for a company that cannot afford to repay all of its debts.

FTX declared bankruptcy on Nov. 11, collapsing amid a wave of customer withdrawals. Federal prosecutors have charged founder Sam Bankman-Fried with stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer assets to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and two of his former associates have already pleaded guilty. Bankman-Fried is scheduled to be arraigned in New York on Thursday.

New York-based law firm Sullivan & Cromwell is representing FTX in its Chapter 11 case and guiding its efforts to return assets to customers. FTX late Wednesday asked the Delaware federal judge overseeing the case for approval to pay the firm’s partners and special counsel between $1,575 and $2,165 per hour for their work.

The top lawyers’ rates far exceed the $1,300 per hour billed by FTX’s new CEO John Ray, who also filed an application with the court late Wednesday.

Court-approved billing rates for bankruptcy attorneys did not cross the $2,000-per-hour mark

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January 4, 2023 by ATTORNEY

Software sales trainer Prehired loses bid to keep bankruptcy in N.Y.

(Reuters) – A New York bankruptcy judge on Tuesday transferred the bankruptcy of Prehired LLC to Delaware, ruling that the software sales training company did not have sufficient business ties to New York to file for bankruptcy in the state.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Philip Bentley granted the transfer at the request of Delaware’s attorney general, one of several state AGs investigating Prehired for its attempts to collect on payment agreements that allowed students to defer fees for career training.

Prehired filed for Chapter 11 protection in New York in September, citing students’ failure to pay for sales training and state attorney general investigations into its attempt to collect money from former students. Prehired requires its students to pay $30,000 in $500 monthly installments after they land a job in the field of software sales.

Delaware Deputy Attorney General Katherine Devanney argued that Prehired’s bankruptcy case should be heard in Delaware, where the company is incorporated and where it sued 289 former students who did not make payments after completing Prehired’s training.

Prehired’s attorney Christopher Warren argued that the bankruptcy case should remain in New York because its principal assets are contracts based on New York law. The assets are mostly

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October 30, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Infowars lawyer, manager barred from bankruptcy case over conflicts

Alex Jones attempts to answer questions about his emails asked by Mark Bankston, lawyer for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, during trial at the Travis County Courthouse, Austin, Texas, U.S., August 3, 2022. Briana Sanchez/Pool via REUTERS

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(Reuters) – A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Tuesday blocked a restructuring executive and an attorney from working for Infowars’ bankrupt parent company over a conflict of interest, potentially throwing the bankruptcy case and the company’s daily operations into disarray.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston found that Marc Schwartz, chief restructuring officer of Infowars parent Free Speech Systems LLC, and attorney Kyung Lee failed to disclose that they sought work from Free Speech Systems before the conclusion of earlier Infowars bankruptcies.

The judge raised the conflicts issue because he presided over the earlier Infowars bankruptcies and was concerned about the apparent overlap of work. The judge said the two men showed a “lack of candor” regarding the overlap and other matters. The judge also said the problem was compounded by Schwartz’s tendency to defer to Alex Jones and his other companies instead of advocating on behalf of FSS alone.

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September 26, 2022 by ATTORNEY

3M awaits bankruptcy ruling that could sink litigation tactic

3M’s attempt to block jury trials of more than 230,000 lawsuits accusing it of harming U.S. soldiers faces a key test this week in front of a federal judge in Indianapolis.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jeffrey Graham is set to consider a temporary halt to the lawsuits so that 3M and its bankrupt subsidiary, Aearo Technologies, can try to settle the claims, most of which have been filed by veterans who say the combat arms earplugs left them with hearing damage.

Graham’s decision will echo across the offices of other firms facing massive numbers of product liability lawsuits, Harvard Law School professor Jared Ellias said in an interview.

“To the extent 3M suffers a setback here it’s likely to set off alarm bells in other corporate boardrooms of companies that want to take advantage of the bankruptcy system,” Ellias said.

The Aearo case uses an increasingly popular strategy in which profitable companies use insolvency proceedings to force settlement talks with victims of allegedly harmful products.

Johnson & Johnson and lumber giant Georgia-Pacific have also put units into bankruptcy with the same goal of ending their litigation woes in one place instead of fighting thousands of trials around the country.

Fighting each

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August 26, 2022 by ATTORNEY
May 2024
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