Here is an interesting article which chronicles the effects of a personal bankruptcy filing by a political; type. In this case, the gentleman who field for bankruptcy is a director of Texas’s $20 billion state Employee Retirement System! Here is the tale as told by the Houston paper:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3489541.html

Mike

In In re Hubbard, 2005 Bankr. LEXIS 2005, (Bankr. S.D. Tex. 2005), five putative debtors had their petitions stricken for failure to file certifications complying with the new Bankruptcy laws, effective October 17, 2005.

The debtors filed their cases on October 26, 2005 and November 1, 2005 and all were filed under the new [...]

Turnaround expert and Enron CEO, Stephen Cooper, could receive a $25 million “success fee” for guiding Enron through its infamous Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Although thousands of employees lost their jobs and investors lost billions, Cooper testified that he saved the company from an anticipated liquidation and recovered nearly three times what creditors initially expected. [...]

There’s an interesting article in the Washington Post today. Check it out while you can. Apparently, the number of personal bankruptcies filed before the new code provisions went into effect October 17 was larger than expected, and the subsequent drop-off is bigger than had been predicted.

According to the article, last week only 3,600 personal bankruptcies [...]

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Brenda Rhoades of Plano, Texas recently found a Chapter 7 Debtor in civil contempt and ordered her taken into custody and jailed by the U.S. Marshal for illegally interfering with the sale of her 42 acre ranch. The Debtor in the case is Dr. Elizabeth Rohr, a general-practice physician in Roanoke, [...]

A Minnesota law firm has filed a lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment that bankruptcy attorneys are not “debt relief agencies” under the newly revised bankruptcy code. Milavetz, Gallop & Milavetz P.A. filed the suit alleging that the restrictions imposed on debt relief agencies under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (”BAPCPA), [...]

In Hallmark v. Athens/Alpha Gas Corp., 2005 Bankr. LEXIS 2097 (8th Cir. 2005), the Court was presented with an issue of whether a creditor’s post-petition right to receive a share of revenue distribution is sufficient to grant it an administrative claim. Administrative priority claims are preferred over unsecured claims since they are paid with [...]

A provision of the new law which overrules the Deprizio decision out of the 7th Cir. has been found to apply to an existing suit pending against Bank of America thus resulting it the dismissal of the 200 million dollar suit. The Court ruled that: “The retroactive application of the new law is “a [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to address the question about whether unpaid workers compensation insurance premiums are entitled to priority status under 11 U.S.C. ? 507(a)(4). On November 7, the Court granted certiorari to an appeal from a decision in favor of an insurance company in Howard Delivery Service, Inc. v. Zurich American Insurance [...]

Here is a link to the Supreme Court virtual tour. We thought this was an interesting and educational site. http://www.oyez.org/oyez/tour/

Mike