2019

Appeal granted; decision reversed. This panel will offer practical advice and best practices and strategies related to preserving, presenting and winning bankruptcy appeals. The panelists will also discuss some of the most demanding legal and subject-matter challenges confronting appellants as they seek to reverse unfavorable bankruptcy court rulings.

There have been a number of recent bankruptcy filings by large and high profile healthcare providers, such as the filings of Verity Health System of California, Inc., in Los Angeles (the second largest hospital bankruptcy case in American history), Hospital Acquisition LLC and 25 related debtors d/b/a Promise Health and American Academic Health System (Hahnemann University Hospital and St. Christopher Hospital in Philadelphia) in Wilmington, Delaware, and Astria Health in Yakima, Washington. Additionally, EmpowerHMS owned or helped manage a rural hospital empire that encompassed 18 facilities across eight states. After funding from a controversial lab-billing venture dried up, 12 of the hospitals entered bankruptcy and eight closed their doors. There has also been a steady stream of lower profile cases, including Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park, Illinois, Penobscot Valley Hospital in Maine, and Springfield Hospital, Inc., in Vermont, and it appears that there are more filings in store. The webinar will discuss (i) the reasons for this growing trend of healthcare cases, (ii) the unique challenges in those cases, which involve not only the typical payment of creditor claims, but also the care of patients, (iii) the particular issues that arise uniquely in this class of cases, including jurisdiction over the Medicare and Medicaid Programs, treatment of provider agreements, the intersection of nonprofit law and bankruptcy law, and treatment of medical malpractice claims, and (iv) whether this trend of healthcare filings will continue.

We will take a deeper dive into some of the more interesting and unique local rules that practitioners should be aware of when completing assets sales in various districts. The panelists will also discuss the need for local rules, differences across jurisdictions, and the process for revisions and implementation.

Oftentimes lawyers must deal with people in vulnerable positions- and there are a whole host of rules that govern our behavior in those instances. Cheating (misrepresentation, rule 4.1 and 3.3), Preying (deceptive practices, rule 8.4), and Shoving (fairness to opposing parties and counsel, rule 3.4) are prohibited by the attorney ethics rules...and why not learn about them with a little humor? Join internationally recognized speaker Stuart Teicher, Esq., (the "CLE Performer") as he alerts us to the issues that should concern us when interacting with people who might be at a competitive disadvantage when facing a lawyer.

This panel will discuss preferences and fraudulent conveyances, the Fairfield cases relating to extraterritoriality, and whether returning the funds acts as a defense (Kingsley v. Wetzel (In re Kingsley), 518 F.3d 874, 877-78 (11th Cir. 2008)) versus what the Seventh Circuit has ruled on the issue (Nostalgia Network Inc. v. Lockwood, 315 F3d 717, 720 (7th Cir. 2002)).

Resolved: A creditor in possession of a debtor’s collateral must surrender it to avoid a stay violation. Resolved: The legal test or application of the standard of disinterestedness should be changed.

How do judges view the various types of committees–official statutory committees (including unsecured creditor, equity, retiree and tort claimant committees) and ad hoc committees? Is the makeup of the committee (trade/landlords/noteholders/bondholders/litigation claimants) relevant? What is Jevic’s impact on the ability of unsecured creditors’ committees to obtain recoveries for their constituents—do committees representing deeply out-of-the-money creditors have anything left in their toolboxes? This panel will discuss these questions and more relating to official and ad hoc committees.