Practice and Procedure

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide three bankruptcy cases this term: (1) Executive Benefits Insurance Agency v. Arkison, which addresses the constitutionality of the district court referral system for bankruptcy cases and consent to jurisdiction where separation of powers is at issue; (2) Clark v. Rameker, which involves the availability of exemptions for inherited IRAs; and (3) Law v. Siegel, which deals with a bankruptcy court’s authority under § 105 to surcharge exemptions. In each of these cases, either the parties are represented by First Circuit practitioners and law firms, or the underlying circuit splits involve precedents from the First Circuit. This panel will offer an insider’s view of the issues and outcomes.

The panel will discuss due diligence requirements before bringing suits, suits or demands made for leverage, asserting claims in excess of estate value, and ethics complaints and litigation advantages.

This panel will take an objective look at the viability and the purposes of the proposed national plan form and the amendments to the bankruptcy rules related thereto.

State courts are increasingly relaxing their rules to allow attorneys to provide a-la-carte services to parties in cases appearing before them. However, bankruptcy courts have been reluctant to do so. Is it because the Bankruptcy Code is so complicated? Or is it because what is good for parties in state court is not good for those in bankruptcy court? This panel of experts will examine whether counsel can provide limited representation services to parties in bankruptcy matters and maintain their ethical obligations to the client.

How can you best advise a client who is unsure whether the stay or the discharge applies? How can you protect a debtor’s benefits offered by the automatic stay and the discharge? Stay violation litigation and discharge analysis are just two of the topics that this expert panel will examine.

Texts, IMs, emails and metadata might contain information that could be helpful — or could be harmful to your client’s claims. You might want to obtain that information from your adversary, but you will undoubtedly also want to see your own client’s information before your adversary does. Where do you look? This expert panel will discuss and debate the myriad electronic discovery issues that exist and the challenges facing parties in bankruptcy cases, including asserting and avoiding claims of spoliation. It is a discussion you will want to be a part of — before your client hits “DELETE.”

Contested evidentiary hearings in chapter 11 confirmation battles have one near-constant attribute: They are expert witness-intensive undertakings. Whether relating to the value of a secured lender’s collateral, the appropriate discount rate to be applied in valuing a payment stream provided under a plan, compliance with the best-interests-of-creditors test, feasibility or any number of other potentially contested issues, presenting expert testimony is at least worth considering, if not required. Panelists will focus on the presentation of expert testimony in contested commercial chapter 11 cases, identify the issues that may require expert testimony, discuss how to locate an appropriate expert, and offer their views on how to prepare and present an expert though the discovery and trial stages. This will not be a presentation on the same old real estate appraisal evidence that most experienced practitioners can recite in their sleep (“I considered the income approach, the comparable-sale approach and the cost approach.” YAWN). Rather, the panel will focus on presenting, and cross-examining, the sorts of sophisticated financial experts that testify regarding the various elements of plan confirmation.

Using Available Technologies in Bankruptcy Litigation — From the Basics to the Cutting Edge

The workshop features Chief Bankruptcy Judges Dennis R. Dow (W.D. Mo.), C. Ray Mullins (N.D. Ga.), Brendan Linehan Shannon (D. Del.), Cecilia G. Morris (S.D.N.Y), and Barbara J. Houser (N.D. Tex.), who will discuss recent circuit splits and hot topics, including the application of the absolute priority rule in individual chapter 11 cases, artificial impairment, structured dismissals, intellectual property licenses, equitable disallowance and § 502(d) issues, and more.