South Carolina State Approved Sessions

This panel will examine the effects thus far of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), as well as Puerto Rico’s economy, including where it came from, where it is now and where it is going.

This panel will explore the roles, responsibilities, benefits, and liabilities in using independent directors through multi-jurisdictional insolvency proceedings and will discuss using directors strategically throughout the life of a company. The panelists will explain the three typical stages of a company where directors could be instructed — going concern, insolvency, and emergence from a restructuring — then explain the roles and responsibilities at each of these appointments. The session would also overlay the jurisdictional distinctions among various administrative proceedings, including offshore liquidations, U.S. bankruptcy, U.S. receiverships, and common law receiverships. The panelists will offer real-world examples to show the differences and how the role of the director is utilized, as well as what is at stake for them, the company, the creditors and the investors.

What are critical-access hospitals, and why are they important? This panel will discuss alternative solutions to producing additional cash flow for failing hospitals, which need to be closely scrutinized by health care professionals familiar with licensing, reimbursement, anti-kickbacks and patient-brokering limitations. The panel will also cover violations of the False Claims Act, Stark Law and Anti-Kickback Statute, as well as state law cases on patient-brokering and the questioning of medical necessity, clinical laboratory outreach programs, physician employment arrangements involving telemedicine, prescription programs and compounding, criminal statutes and DOJ/state regulator issues, how to reorganize legally, dealing with CMS (Medicare/Medicaid), nongovernmental and third-party commercial payers during a restructuring, and general rules on pass-through billing for outreach programs.

Recent developments in offshore law have increased the effectiveness of the tools available to trace and recover assets through the offshore insolvency process. This panel will be conducted in a formal debate style, using the format of first proposition followed by first opposition, then second proposition followed by second opposition. The debates will look at the illegality defense, clawback claims, the dishonesty test and foreign officeholder recognition, among other issues. Each debate will be seven minutes with a four-minute closing, followed by a vote.

This panel will discuss the role that alternative dispute resolution (ADR) can and does play in bankruptcy, starting with the tension between bankruptcy and ADR, as all ADR processes conflict with bankruptcy’s goal of centralizing estate administration into a single proceeding. In the U.S., this tension is most prevalent when a creditor seeks to enforce a pre-petition arbitration agreement. The panel will next examine the role that mediation plays in U.S. bankruptcy cases by examining the types of issues and disputes that are amenable to resolution via mediation. Finally, the panel will explore the power and potential of ADR in the cross-border arena, looking at models for how cross-border insolvency issues have been handled procedurally and identifying types of disputes that are well-suited to resolution via ADR.

This panel will discuss recent Chapter 15 and cross-border cases, including those involving the scope of discovery available to foreign representatives, § 109 eligibility, venue issues, and parallel case concerns. The panel will also discuss logistical and practical solutions in running chapter 15 cases.

This session will discuss both prosecuting and defending § 523 exceptions to discharge adversary proceedings. Rather than cover the substantive law governing what is dischargeable, this session will concentrate on strategies for prosecuting and defending these adversary proceedings, including what must be pled to state a claim for relief, strategies for filing motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment, understanding when collateral estoppel or res judicata from prior litigation has an effect, strategies regarding settlement and mediation, advising clients on options for settlement vs. litigation, and discovery issues and trial strategies.

This session will consider what an attorney can do after receiving an adverse decision from the bankruptcy court, including strategic considerations, as well as the nuts-and-bolts procedures in deciding whether to appeal and in prosecuting an appeal. What decisions are appealable as final orders? What decisions require permission to appeal on an interlocutory basis? What are the applicable Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure governing appeals, and what requirements do they impose? What is the standard of review for an appeal of an incorrect legal decision? What is the standard of review for an appeal of an incorrect factual finding? How and when can you obtain a stay of an adverse ruling pending the appeal? How do doctrines of jurisdiction, standing, mootness and ripeness apply to an appeal? What types of issues most frequently get appealed, and what rates of success are there?

When a client comes to you with a small business in trouble, do you fully understand the financial information they are sharing with you so that you can properly advise them? This session will discuss how to read and understand that financial information, covering such issues as the difference between a financial statement and a balance sheet, the difference between a financial statement that is audited and one that is reviewed or compiled by management, profit-and-loss statements and how does they differ from cash-flow statement, and the levels and types of financial information your client needs to assemble, and you need to understand, for your client to be successful in reorganizing.