Ron Sheffer, an attorney with law offices located in Paducah, Lexington, Louisville, and Henderson, Kentucky, filed for bankruptcy in June 2003. He listed assets of $1 million and liabilities of $16.6 million. Sheffer ran into financial trouble when he borrowed money against projected income.
In an effort to satisfy creditors and a [...]

Ford Motor Corp is currently in a turnaround plan which hopes to make the automotive giant profitable again by 2008. Ford says the plan is progressing ahead of schedule but there are tough conditions in the near future. Decreasing sales of SUVs and the rising cost of materials will create difficulties in the [...]

Bankruptcy Code sections 507(a)(4)(A) and (a)(5) grant unsecured creditors with a claim for unpaid “wages, salaries, or commissions” and unpaid contributions to “an employee benefit plan” a priority payment in the debtor’s bankruptcy. The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that these sections do not encompass payments for workers’ compensation insurance. As a [...]

On Monday, June 26, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court granted cert in the case of Marrama v. Citizens Bank of Massachusetts. The case involves a Chapter 7 debtor whose conversion to Chapter 13 was denied. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that a debtor’s right to convert from Chapter 7 to [...]

There is an ongoing legal issue relating to some hierarchical churches which can be summarized, albeit in a idiomatic way as: which entity owns the churchhouse? Now there are a couple of possible owners: the local parish, the regional diocese, the national church or perhaps an international headquarter. In the case of Spokane [...]

Since emerging from bankruptcy and selling its Michigan headquarters in 2005, the discount retailer Kmart begins auctioning fine artwork, including a rare Picasso tapestry, estimated $25,000, and a 15-century Ming Dynasty lotus-flower watercolor on silk. “They purchased most of the art back in the 1970’s when the market didn’t command such pricey price [...]

Delta’s pilot pension plan provides employees with a monthly payout based on their salary. The airlines filed for Bankruptcy protection September 2005 and is now requesting the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., to terminate the pilot’s pension plan which if approved will take effect September 2.
Chief Executive Gerald [...]

Dustin Diamond, best known as uber-nerd Screech on the early 1990s teen TV series “Saved by the Bell”, is selling T-shirts in order to try to save his home from foreclosure. Diamond’s Port Washington, WI home is under a foreclosure order and he needs to raise $250,000.
Diamond is currently a standup comic [...]

Goldman Sachs has hired James H. M. Sprayregen, a prominent bankruptcy lawyer from Kirkland & Ellis to run its restructuring practice. His hiring could possibly mean that the firm is “gearing up for a hailstorm of bankruptcies and what folks in the business politely like to call a distressed situations.”
Since the change in the [...]

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a “defense costs” sanction against an attorney is not dischargeable in the attorney’s bankruptcy.
James Jay Ball, the debtor/attorney, had represented two plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought against A.O. Smith Corporation in Louisiana federal court. The Judge in the Louisiana case, Judge Tucker L. Melancon, granted [...]