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.

Courts As Institutional Reformers: Bankruptcy and Public Law Litigation
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Jurisprudence | 0

Kathleen G. Noonan (University of Pennsylvania), Jonathan C. Lipson (Temple University—Beasley School of Law), and William H. Simon (Columbia Law School)

Wags sometimes ask: What is chapter 11 good for?

In a new paper, we show that, among other things, it provides a template that both legitimates and explicates Public Law Litigation (PLL), civil class action suits against public agencies such as police departments and prison systems. These are among the most controversial disputes that courts face; often criticized, and widely misunderstood. Analogies to chapter 11 practice show how critics err, and how PLL works.

We make three basic points. First, we show that both bankruptcy and PLL, which share roots in the federal equity receivership, are judicial responses to collective action problems that other institutional mechanisms (e.g., markets or electoral politics) cannot or will not address.

Second, we show that courts in neither context “run” the organizations in question. In both types of case, management (of the debtor or agency) remains in possession and control, subject to judicial and stakeholder (e.g., creditor or plaintiff) oversight.

Third, chapter 11 and PLL both operate at the organizational level, through “restructuring.” For chapter 11, this will usually involve a plan of reorganization. The PLL analogue is a settlement agreement in a consent decree. Like plans, consent decrees typically reflect negotiated improvements in operations designed to increase the agency’s chances of success.

Critics of PLL sometimes claim that courts commandeer public instrumentalities, exceeding their expertise and authority. But this is no truer in PLL than it is in chapter 11 reorganization. Rather, judges in both spheres facilitate consensual resolutions that seek to balance stakeholder participation against managerial discretion.

This matters because the Trump Administration has vowed to “deconstruct the administrative state,” which implies a reduction in the amount and quality of public services. Increased PLL would be a plausible response.

If that happens, courts should focus not on whether they can supervise the restructuring of public agencies, but how to do so more effectively. We show that the chapter 11 system can provide helpful guidance.

The full article is available here.