LJN Newsletters

Recent national cases of interest.

This article examines two issues that can arise when a company and its former officer or director are adverse to each other and one seeks access to potentially privileged documents of the other.

U.S. antitrust enforcement, once the impetus for numerous foreign blocking statutes, now epitomizes the type of global cooperation necessary for effective law enforcement. But the past six years offer potent counterexamples that highlight the dangers of unilateralism and disrespect for foreign sovereignty ' some relatively minor, others far more consequential.

While the duty of lawyers representing financial institutions in the U.S. is almost solely toward their clients, in the EU, lawyers have affirmative obligations to report suspected money-laundering activity to government authorities. In other words, lawyers may be involuntarily conscripted as enforcement agents or 'gatekeepers' at the institutions they represent. American lawyers in the European offices of U.S.-based 'international' law firms are not exempt.

Who's going where; who's doing what.

The vast majority of petitions filed during 2007 were non-business cases; in fact 96.7% of all cases filed in 2007 were non-business. In calendar year 2007, there were 822,590 non-business cases filed, a 38% increase from the 597,965 non-business bankruptcy filings in 2006. By contrast, in 2005, non-business filings totaled 2,039,214.Here's the breakdown.

Last month, the authors discussed the fact that even though Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code has been in effect for over 30 years, fewer than 100 Chapter 9 cases have been filed during that time. Municipal bankruptcy cases ' or, more accurately, proceedings involving the adjustment of a municipality's debts ' are a rarity, compared with reorganization cases under Chapter 11. This, however, may be changing. The authors now continue that discussion.

The Delaware Court of Chancery recently emphasized that issues of corporate governance remain the purview of the state of incorporation, notwithstanding the filing of a bankruptcy petition and the accompanying automatic stay, which ordinarily acts to halt proceedings against the debtor.