2021 Rocky Mountain Bankruptcy Conference

The judges of this year's Rocky Mountain Bankruptcy Conference will hold in-depth discussions on navigating virtual hearings and what we have learned from the pandemic; the benefits of filing commercial cases in Rocky Mountain jurisdictions; gross-income calculations in light of the closures of small, closely held businesses; trends in consumer/small business cases during the pandemic; and ethics and professionalism in a (more) virtual world.

This session includes a panel discussion of the unique issues and challenges involved with demonstrating plan feasibility during our current pandemic economy. The panelists will also discuss how bankruptcy courts have dealt with the issues thus far, and how debtors can make their best cases before the court.

Covering a wide array of bankruptcy litigation matters, this session will focus on issues relating to stay relief, discharge litigation, and post-discharge injunction matters. Evidentiary considerations and standards for relief will be highlighted, along with case law developments and practice tips from the experienced panelists.

Bankruptcy Judges Elizabeth Brown and Michael Romero will discuss the year’s widest splits and most controversial opinions with ABI Editor-at-Large Bill Rochelle. They also will analyze important decisions from the Tenth Circuit, the BAPs and the District of Colorado.

We often forget that what we say and how we say it can signal more than we intended. One of the primary ways in which "what we say"/"how we say it" creates such signals is with the wording of time entries, whether or not those time entries are ever reviewed by a bankruptcy court. Clients read bills, too, so if one wants to communicate that their work was valuable and efficiently performed, the fable of Goldilocks comes to mind: The time entries need to be "just right." When they're not, clients and courts can draw conclusions that we never intended them to draw. This panel will discuss these issues and more.

This panel will provide an overview of the requirements for a reorganization plan in subchapter V cases under the Small Business Reorganization Act, including the new fair-and-equitable standard for cramdowns, and effective strategies to get to plan confirmation.

This panel will focus on Congress’s new foray into streamlining small business reorganizations under the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019, as amended by the CARES Act of 2020. The panelists will examine similarities and differences between subchapter V and traditional chapter 11 reorganization, debtor eligibility, and the role of the newly created position of subchapter V trustee. The panelists will then examine early decisions on these issues from bankruptcy courts around the country.

Since March 2002, the U.S. economy has been in a recession brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the Great Recession of 2008 caused a jump in business and consumer bankruptcy filings, the COVID Recession has not yet resulted in any such increase. Indeed, consumer bankruptcy filings since March 2020 have seen a historic decline. This panel will explore the economic differences between the Great Recession and the COVID Recession, and attempt to explain their inconsistent effects on bankruptcy filings. It will also consider why a bankruptcy wave has been slow to form under the COVID Recession, what events will eventually trigger a wave, and what the impact of the Great Recession suggests about the size, shape and timing of the coming wave of bankruptcy filings.

While there can be no doubt under our current system of jurisprudence that lower courts are bound by the published decisions of appellate courts, the question remains: What can a trial court do with broad pronouncements found in an appellate decision based on limited or dissimilar facts? Judge Michael will discuss the dilemma of interpreting and using appellate precedent.