Texas Two-Stepping Out of Bankruptcy
by | posted in: Bankruptcy, Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Reform, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Chapter 11, fraudulent transfer, Jurisprudence, Legislation | 0

By Michael A. Francus (Harvard Law School)

Michael Francus

Johnson & Johnson’s use of the Texas Two-Step to manage its talc liabilities has put the company, and the Two-Step, front and center in the roiling debates over aggressive uses of the bankruptcy system. Those debates have led to scholarly criticism, congressional hearings, and proposed legislation that would curtail debtors’ ability to so use the bankruptcy courts.

My Essay details the mechanics of the Two-Step. Beginning with the Texas divisive merger, the funding agreement, and forum shopping for the Fourth Circuit, the Essay fleshes out precisely how the Two-Step boxes in tort claimants. Like other scholarship, this Essay identifies the risk that such maneuvering effects a fraudulent transfer. It also goes a step further, arguing that the point of the Two-Step is not to succeed, but to delay. Fraudulent-transfer litigation in a bankruptcy consumes time because it requires an adversary proceeding, and that delay pressures tort claimants to settle. So the Two-Step can succeed as long as claimants cannot wait out the course of the bankruptcy, even if a court never declares the particular Two-Step to be a proper use of divisive merger law rather than an improper fraudulent transfer.

Instead of playing into this delay game, this Essay argues, courts should evaluate the Texas Two-Step for good faith. Tort claimants can raise such challenges as a motion to dismiss (as some have) and thus avoid the need for a fraudulent-transfer adversary proceeding. And under current doctrine, the Two-Step likely qualifies as a bad-faith filing: In most cases, the Two-Step is a litigation tactic. And the Two-Step, invariably, is filed by an entity created solely to file for bankruptcy. Both of those are doctrinal hallmarks of bad-faith bankruptcies.

More broadly, the Essay explains, the Two-Step and good-faith challenges to it underscore the continuing role of common law in bankruptcy. The Code does not define good-faith filing, so courts have developed the doctrine case by case. They may yet find an acceptable form of Two-Step, one which yields tort claimants the rights they would receive in, say, a Johnson & Johnson bankruptcy, without hurting Johnson & Johnson’s ability to do business by forcing the whole company into bankruptcy. Along the way, though, a vigilant common-law gatekeeping is warranted, and judges should not hesitate to dismiss Two-Steps thinking that a later ruling on a fraudulent-transfer adversary proceeding can adequately safeguard tort claimants from an improper use of the bankruptcy system.

The full essay will be available at 121 Mich. L. Rev. Online __ (forthcoming 2022) and can be accessed here.

Mass Exploitation
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Reform, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates | 0

By Samir D. Parikh (Lewis & Clark Law School; Fulbright Schuman Scholar; Bloomberg Law; Fulbright Commission)

Samir D. Parikh

Modern mass tort defendants – including Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma, USA Gymnastics, and Boy Scouts of America – have developed unprecedented techniques for resolving mass tort cases; innovation coupled with exploitation. Three weapons in this new arsenal are particularly noteworthy. Before a filing, divisive mergers allow corporate defendants to access bankruptcy on their terms. Once in bankruptcy, these mass restructuring debtors curate advantageous provisions in the Bankruptcy Code to craft their own ad hoc resolution mechanism implemented through plans of reorganization. This maneuver facilitates various questionable outcomes, including the third-party releases the Sackler family recently secured. Finally, in order to minimize its financial contribution to a victims’ settlement trust, a mass restructuring debtor can agree to convert its tainted business into a public benefit company after bankruptcy and devote future profits – no matter how speculative they may be – to victims.

The net effect of these legal innovations is difficult to assess because the intricacies are not fully understood. Debtors argue that these resolution devices provide accelerated and amplified distributions. And forum shopping has landed cases before accommodating jurists willing to tolerate unorthodoxy. The fear, however, is that mass tort victims are being exploited. The aggregation of these maneuvers may allow culpable parties to sequester funds outside of the bankruptcy court’s purview and then rely on statutory loopholes to suppress victim recoveries.  Mass restructuring debtors are also pursuing victim balkanization – an attempt to pit current victims against future victims in order to facilitate settlements that may actually create disparate treatment across victim classes.

This Essay is the first to identify and assess the new shadowed practices in mass restructuring cases, providing perspective on interdisciplinary dynamics that have eluded academics and policymakers. This is one of the most controversial legal issues in the country today, but there is scant scholarship exploring improvement of the flawed machinery. This Essay seeks to create a dialogue to explore whether a legislative or statutory response is necessary and what shape such a response could take.

The full article will be available at 170 U. Pa. L. Rev. Online ___ (forthcoming 2021) and can be accessed here.

Bankruptcy Tourism and the European Union’s Corporate Restructuring Quandary: The Cathedral in Another Light
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, International and Comparative | 0

By Samir D. Parikh (Lewis & Clark Law School)

Samir D. Parikh

For the last decade, the European Union has been reconceptualizing its corporate restructuring framework with the hope of bolstering capital markets and improving cross-border lending. Unfortunately, the system remains plagued by two intractable problems: divergent substantive law at the Member State level and jurists unaccustomed to guiding reorganization cases. The result is a system beset by uncertainty and disparate treatment. The EU is intent on addressing these problems, but progress has been elusive. The EU must work through recommendations and directives to encourage Member States to align substantive restructuring law with policy design. But Member States have been unresponsive to the EU’s recent efforts. The prospect of addressing these intractable problems in the foreseeable future is grim. Therefore, this Article breaks with current scholarship and urges the EU to adopt a radical alternative. The EU should consider making legal and structural changes that will facilitate bankruptcy tourism. I argue that affording corporations increased discretion as to the location of restructuring cases will aid in creating judicial hubs of optimal law and experienced jurists. The EU has the power to adopt my recommendations by simply modifying its own law and procedure, which should accelerate implementation timelines.

Ultimately, economists foresee an impending financial correction. The EU’s restructuring framework is unprepared to offer predictable and comprehensive reorganization outcomes for the next wave of distressed corporations. This Article proposes a novel vantage point from which to assess policy alignment.

For previous Roundtable posts on for bankruptcy tourism, see Wolf-Georg Ringe, “Bankruptcy Forum Shopping in Europe.”

The full article is available here. Forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law.

Bankruptcy Law as a Balancing System – Lessons from a Comparative Analysis of the Interaction Between Labor and Bankruptcy Laws
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, International and Comparative, Jurisprudence | 0

By Omer Kimhi (Haifa University Faculty of Law) and Arno Doebert (Independent)

The rehabilitation of distressed corporations often requires the reduction of labor costs. In order to regain economic stability, distressed firms need to terminate employees or modify their employment conditions. When employees are protected by statutes or by collective bargaining agreements, however, such measures are not always possible. The employer’s freedom to manage its work force is limited, and it may fail to implement labor reforms necessary for the firm’s recovery.

In the paper, we examine the intersection between bankruptcy and labor laws from a comparative perspective. We study the labor and bankruptcy laws of three different jurisdictions, the Netherlands, France, and Germany, and find a so far unexplored trend. Jurisdictions with high employment protection levels relax their otherwise rigid labor rules through their bankruptcy system. Within bankruptcy, employers enjoy greater flexibility and thus are better situated to decrease their labor costs and to reorganize.

The paper explores this trend vis-à-vis the arguments brought up by the procedural approach to bankruptcy. It looks at the rationale of the bankruptcy-induced modifications to the labor laws, and the effects these changes have on the bankruptcy process. We show that although the modifications are designed to promote the preservation of firms as going concerns, forum-shopping problems may lead to the opposite outcome. The analysis contributes to the ongoing debate between the traditional and procedural approaches, and sheds light on the interpretation of section 1113 of the Bankruptcy Code as well.

The full article is available here.

 

 

 

Bankruptcy Forum Shopping in Europe
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Reform, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates | 0

By Wolf-Georg Ringe (University of Hamburg – Institute of Law & Economics; University of Oxford – Faculty of Law).

Over the past several years, European firms have been active in cross-border arbitrage to benefit from a more favorable bankruptcy regime. The European Insolvency Regulation (EIR), an instrument determining the competent courts and the applicable law in EU cross-border insolvency proceedings, has long sought to curb such efforts. A major reform which came into force in 2017 has the specific objective of further restricting abusive versions of forum shopping, in particular by introducing a three-month “suspension period” for forum shopping activities carried out shortly before the debtor files for insolvency.

In a recent article, I demonstrate that these efforts fail to achieve a satisfactory response to forum shopping. The key element of the reform, the suspension period, is both over-inclusive and under-inclusive in its scope of application and may, at best, be entirely without effect. The new rule will also create significant uncertainty and undermine effective ways of business restructuring.

Meanwhile, the reform does not address new variants of forum shopping, such as the use of the British “scheme of arrangement” by continental European firms. Such “procedural” forum shopping may be effected entirely without any physical relocation, as it does not come within the scope of application of the EIR.

The laudable goal of the EIR to improve the pricing of risks in cross-border insolvencies is jeopardized where the rules on jurisdiction are unclear or uncertain. The 2017 reform is a missed opportunity to improve the system by attaching substantive bankruptcy law and jurisdiction to a company’s registered office as the only clear and predictable connecting factor. Instead, the reform introduces new riddles and inconsistencies. Such steps will blur rather than improve the pricing of insolvency risk and thereby ultimately drive up the cost of capital.

The full article is available here.