Call 855-808-4530 or email [email protected] to receive your discount on a new subscription.
We continue to be impressed how recurring issues confront the courts to interpret the Bankruptcy Code — conflicts between bankruptcy and other federal policies, addressing the plain meaning of statutory provisions, and determining when a claim arises under the bankruptcy code. Where tax liabilities are involved, one can anticipate tension between bankruptcy policy objectives and federal tax policy. So when does a tax liability claim arise in a bankruptcy case? If a tax claim accrues prior to the petition date, it may be a prepetition unsecured claim. If it arises after the bankruptcy filing, it may qualify for priority treatment as an administrative expense of the bankruptcy estate, and must be paid in full before distribution to holders of unsecured claims. This is not a trivial matter. The issue was recently addressed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware in In re Affirmative Insurance Holdings, Civ. Case No. 19-2034-RGA (July 27, 2020). Judge Richard Andrews, sitting as an appellate court reviewing a decision of the bankruptcy court, ruled that federal income taxes for the year in which a debtor files for bankruptcy are entitled to priority treatment as administrative expenses when the end of the taxable year occurred after the bankruptcy petition date. The court noted that the issue of how to treat a “straddle year” for federal income tax under the Bankruptcy Code has not been decided by any appellate court.
Continue reading by getting
started with a subscription.
Delaware District Court Could Guide Supreme Court Purdue Pharma Decision
By Michael L. Cook
A bankruptcy court properly held that derivative claims based on “piercing the corporate veil theory of liability [were] released under” a confirmed reorganization plan, but that direct “claims for negligent undertaking” were not released and “could be asserted” in state court against the debtors’ equity sponsors.
Court Caps Landlord's Bankruptcy Claim Against Lease Guarantor
By Andrew C. Kassner and Joseph N. Argentina Jr.
A big issue in real estate and retail bankruptcies, among others, involves the disposition of commercial real estate leases, given the potential magnitude of landlord damage claims under state law resulting from a tenant’s default under a long-term lease.
Delaware Bankruptcy Court Rejects Equity Holder's Challenge to Revoke Confirmation Order
By Lawrence J. Kotler
The equity owner asserted that the confirmation order previously entered by the court should be revoked based on the equity owner’s claim that value was lost due to improper sale and marketing efforts by the debtors and its professionals both pre- and post-bankruptcy and, as such, they should have been “in the money” and entitled to a distribution under the confirmed plan.
By George Williams
One of the major catalysts of the “Crypto Winter” that began in 2022 was the collapse of Terraform Labs’s native token LUNA in May 2022. Now two years and a dozen crypto-related bankruptcies later, Terraform Labs has filed for Chapter 11 protection.