2019

Will the new Small Business Reorganization Act lead to more successful restructurings and fewer liquidations of small businesses while still protecting creditors’ rights?

Is there too much emphasis on reducing student loan debt, including through bankruptcy, and not enough about the real causes of skyrocketing college costs?

This panel will explore recent cases and trends of credit bidding in chapter 11 cases. Many lenders are now requesting up-front approval of credit bid rights in debtor-in-possession financing orders, which would curtail the bankruptcy court’s ability to modify or limit credit bidding rights under Bankruptcy Code § 363(k) later on when the assets are auctioned. The panel will examine recent decisions on credit bidding and what limitations courts have applied to a secured creditor’s right to credit bid in bankruptcy cases. The panel will also explore cross-border issues concerning credit bidding on groups of assets that are be owned by foreign entities, and the interplay between courts concerning the sale of these types of assets.

This panel will be led by a senior program analyst for the Law Assistance Program for the State Bar of California and will be an interactive discussion about how prevalent substance use and mental health issues are among attorneys, and how substance use and mental health issues impair an attorney’s ability to perform legal services competently. The panelists will also describe the signs and symptoms of substance abuse, addiction, depression, anxiety and stress, and provide information on lawyer-assistance programs and other resources.

All constituents in the chapter 11 plan process want their reorganized debtors to be wildly successful. This panel will focus on how the chapter 11 process can be used to satisfy the feasibility standard in § 1129(a), with an emphasis on avoiding subsequent filings, and will outline the top 10 tricks to improve feasibility.

This session will focus on the views of patient care ombudsmen (PCOs) on the quality-of-care issues they routinely confront in chapter 11 cases; how debtor, secured lender and committee professionals react to either support or suppress the findings made by health care experts; in-depth analysis of what constitutes the proper protocol to evaluate quality of care; the differences in the approaches made to the PCO role by a doctor, nurse and/or health care administrator; whether PCOs universally should be doctors, nurses or health care administrators and not lawyers posing as health care professionals; the obligations of PCOs to tell quality-of-care stories without concern for the potential economic impact on an exit strategy in the bankruptcy (i.e., sale, potential loss of license, etc.); the impact of transfer trauma on a change of control arising from a potential sale of the health care business; how the PCO is differentiated from a state long-term-care ombudsman, Medicare and Medicaid surveyors; and the PCO’s role as patient advocate in bankruptcy cases.

Featuring Keynote by Dr. Jen Welter, the First Female NFL Coach

The panel will discuss proposed and newly enacted legislation and how it will affect bankruptcy practice. The panel will review the Haven Act and other veteran legislation, the small business reorganization bill, the chapter 12 debt limit bill, various student loan bills and other legislation.

Although mediation is a recommended method of dispute resolution by many government agencies, in the bankruptcy context it is often hard to get government litigants to the table. This panel will explore the Issues and methods of mediating disputes in commercial cases that involve governments and such government agencies as the SEC, EPA, and FCC, as well as state attorneys general and relevant state agencies. Issues to be discussed include how to get the decision maker into the room and how to get a governmental party to the table when its policy agenda may go beyond the business issues in the case at hand. In some instances, there may be perceived statutory impediments or “conflicts” between the government agency as regulator and as creditor. The focus will be on restructuring-determinative issues involving government agencies and adversary proceedings between debtors or other creditor constituencies and government agencies. The program will not include discussions of chapter 9 mediations, which involve very different issues. The panel will include judges, mediators and public and private litigants with experience in this type of mediation.