Supreme Court

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Last week, the Supreme Court held in an 8-1 decision that the Bankruptcy Code “unequivocally abrogates the sovereign immunity” of federally recognized Indian tribes, including immunity to the automatic stay under § 362.

I was intrigued when I first heard about the pending Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Coughlin case at the ABI Spring Meeting back in April and probably overhyped it with my colleagues when I returned. As it turns out, the decision, like so many bankruptcy decisions from the Supreme Court, is a rather routine statutory analysis case, no matter how much Justice Gorsuch tries to make it more than that in his dissent.

Here’s a concise, if perfunctory, summary.Continue Reading Supreme Court Holds That Indian Tribes are Subject to the Automatic Stay in Bankruptcy

What better way to wake Plan Proponent from a seven (!) month slumber than a minor Supreme Court opinion? Monday’s Taggart v. Lorenzen decision is not a confirmation opinion, but we’ve always tried to cover the Court’s bankruptcy decisions. In Taggart, with Justice Breyer writing for his unanimous colleagues, the Court held that, under § 524 of the Bankruptcy Code, a court can impose civil contempt sanctions for violations of a debtor’s discharge order when there is no “objectively reasonable” basis for viewing the creditor’s conduct as lawful under that order. 

Continue Reading Supreme Court Adopts Objective Standard for Bankruptcy Discharge Violations

On Monday, President Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to fill Justice Anthony Kennedy’s soon to be vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Like Judge Merrick Garland, former President Obama’s last nominee, and unlike now-Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s first nominee, Judge Kavanaugh rarely encounters…

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument yesterday in Lamar, Archer & Cofrin, LLP v. Appling, a case from the 11th Circuit regarding the bankruptcy dischargeability exceptions in 11 U.S.C.  § 523(a)(2). Locally, Appling is important because it originated across the street–literally–in Chief Bankruptcy Judge James P. Smith’s courtroom here in the Middle…

Once again from my in-laws’ home in Potomac, Maryland, here’s Plan Proponent’s Best of 2017 post, a link by link Top 10 of our third year of blogging–although my wife just asked, in rather savage fashion, “Did you even have 10 posts this year?” Wow. (We had 11 posts, so one unlucky post about…

The Association of Insolvency & Restructuring Advisors published its 1st Quarter 2017 Journal last Friday. Richard Gaudet, of HDH Advisors, LLC, and I wrote the article titled “Till Realized: Calculating Objective Chapter 11 Cramdown Rates without Expert Testimony.” The focus of the article is on the application of the U.S. Supreme Court…