No CLE

Considering an appeal? Learn some practical tips and considerations from this panel of experts and judges.

“Proceed” With Caution: Navigating 11 U.S.C. § 552’s effect on prepetition security interests in proceeds of various assets

Learn from others’ mistakes and experiences. The panel will share tips and painful lessons on anticipating and avoiding ethical and legal problems in business restructuring cases.

Panel will highlight practice risks that include debtor and creditor viewpoints. The topics will include: tracking and anticipating obvious and unknown deadlines, appreciating inherent conflicts that may pose ethical problems as well as critical path obstacles to hidden conflicts of interest, springing conflicts of interest, undisclosed client expectations creating dissatisfaction with the process and outcome, and underestimating expense and delay leading to crisis of payment and inability to effectuate strategy.

This panel will discuss issues inherent when a client files multiple bankruptcies, including dismissal, discharge, automatic stay, lien-stripping, chapter 20, married debtors, co-debtors and more.

This session will focus on the increasing number of senior citizens filing for bankruptcy. Why are so many elders now filing? What unique challenges do they present? Do their Social Security benefits and pension incomes become available to fund chapter 13 plans? How are reverse mortgages treated in chapters 7 and 13? What happens when an elderly debtor passes away during a chapter 7, 11 or 13 bankruptcy case? What if there is a surviving spouse who is also a joint debtor?

What issues are likely to be raised by tough clients, and how do you best address them? Join the panelists as they help you weave your way through this and other ethical minefields.

This session will feature a “speed-dating-style” of roundtable discussion of current bankruptcy and practical skills issues with regional judges and trustees changing tables every 15-20 minutes.

This panel will present a fraudulent transfer update and discussion regarding the split over § 546(e) safe harbors (Physiotherapy, Tribune, Madoff, Meritt Management), 10-year reach-back periods (Kipnis), the reinstatement of unsecured creditors’ intentional fraudulent conveyance claims and the ruling that the intent of the CEO can be imputed to the company (Lyondell), the finding that substantive consolidation does not augment the trustee’s § 544(b) avoiding powers by allowing the trustee to rely on predicate creditors from another estate (Petters), and the ruling that access to a credit line rebuts unreasonably small capital claims (SemCrude). The session will also feature an update on the Trust Indenture Act, including discussion of the recent Second Circuit decision in Chesapeake Energy and its implications regarding the finality of bankruptcy court orders, and an update on the litigation of feasibility issues (Paragon).

Ethics is not just a course you must take to keep your license. Ethical guidelines are something that should be incorporated in your day-to-day practice.