Indiana State Approved Sessions

Your pleadings and briefs are the first, often the last and typically the most comprehensive opportunity you have to persuade a court. This panel will provide you with essential guidance for effective and persuasive written advocacy at both the trial and appellate levels.

This panel will discuss a variety of issues surrounding the use of plan-support agreements, including their structure, goals and benefits, their impact on non-signatories, disclosure and solicitation issues, lessons learned from recent cases (Innkeepers and Indianapolis Downs), and the applicability of plan-support agreements in middle-market cases.

Two litigants will argue plan confirmation issues before a panel of three judges. These issues may include treatment of make-whole premiums, cure and reinstatement to avoid payment of default interest, plan releases and exculpation, whether multiple debtors must each satisfy § 1129 requirements in a nonsubstantively consolidated plan, plan settlements, post-petition lock-up agreements, the dischargeability of unknown claims, death traps and gifting.

This panel will discuss the variety of issues that can arise in an individual chapter 11 case and will cover the issue of limited representation — the subject that the Ethics Task Force report presented at this year’s Annual Spring Meeting. This session will also be of interest to counsel representing lenders, who are often just as befuddled when it comes to handling individual chapter 11 cases.

This panel will discuss the various types of evidentiary privileges that arise in bankruptcy practice — including joint-defense privilege, Fifth Amendment, attorney/client privilege and husband/wife privilege — and how they may be inadvertently waived. The session will also include what happens to these privileges in connection with 363 asset sales, the establishment of liquidating trusts and other sticky issues.

Several authors of ABI’s recent publication, The Chief Restructuring Officer’s Guide to Bankruptcy, will be joined by other experts to discuss various issues raised in the book and provide practical insight into the rights and responsibilities of CROs in distressed situations.

This program will cover recent developments in distressed-asset sales. Topics will include successor liability, finality of sales and adherence to procedures, the interplay between §§ 363 and 365(h), intellectual property sale issues, break-up fees, collusive bidding issues and other topical issues.

An issue consistently raised during the course of the Consumer Bankruptcy Fee Study was the effect of higher bankruptcy costs and the cumbersome and time-consuming bankruptcy process on distributions to unsecured creditors. Given that increasing creditor distributions was a reason for BAPCPA’s enactment, that this question was ripe for exploration. Prof. Lupica will present the findings of her study and the panel will discuss.

This first session of a new “skills” seminar series will examine documents that are often used to restructure debt outside of bankruptcy. Learn the purpose and legal underpinnings of the various component parts of frequently used workout documents such as forbearance agreements, intercreditor agreements and restructuring/override agreements. The panel will focus on real-world examples of good and bad provisions of workout documents and will provide drafting tips.