Updated Overview of the Jevic Files: How Courts Are Interpreting and Applying the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Structured Dismissals and Priority Skipping
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By Shane G. Ramsey and John T. Baxter (Nelson Mullins)

Shane G. Ramsey
John T. Baxter

The U.S. Supreme Court in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., 137 S.Ct. 973 (2017), addressed the issue of chapter 11 debtors using structured dismissals to end-run the statutory priority rules. The Court’s ruling preserved the priority system, holding that the bankruptcy court could not approve a structured dismissal of a chapter 11 case that provided for distributions that failed to follow the standard priority rules unless the affected creditors consented to such treatment. Although the Bankruptcy Code does not expressly apply its priority distribution scheme to a structured dismissal, the Court clarified that courts should do so.

As a way to track how bankruptcy courts across the country are applying the ruling in Jevic, the Nelson Mullins Bankruptcy Protector has introduced a new periodic series: the Jevic Files. As of December 31, 2019, the Jevic Files has collected and summarized twenty-one cases across nineteen jurisdictions. While the majority of the cases involved structured dismissals in the context of a chapter 11 case, courts have also applied the ruling in Jevic to the dismissal of chapter 13 plans; the priority of trustee payments in a chapter 7 case; and even a state court foreclosure hearing that came on the heels of a dismissed chapter 11 case. As Jevic continues to be interpreted and applied in bankruptcy (and other) courts throughout the country, we will continue to keep an updated summary of cases through the Jevic Files.

The article is available here.

Absolute Priority Redux: First-Day Orders and Pre-Plan Settlements in Chapter 11 Post-Jevic
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Jurisprudence, Priority | 0

By Bruce Grohsgal (Delaware Law School Widener University)

Bankruptcy’s absolute priority rule arose 150 years ago to prevent insiders from using their control over an enterprise – often coupled with hypothetical valuations, contrived sales, and collusion with other parties – to obtain a greater distribution or “control premium” from estate assets.  This premium came at the expense of parties who had a higher distributional priority but were not “in on the deal.”  The Supreme Court again considered this issue in Jevic in 2017, when it held that a chapter 11 case-ending settlement called a “structured dismissal” must comply with the same absolute priority rule that applies to the similarly case-ending confirmation of a chapter 11 cramdown plan.  The Court emphasized that insider control and collusion can endanger bankruptcy’s core principle of an orderly distribution in accordance with statutory priorities.

The Jevic Court explicitly left open, though, the extent to which a pre-plan settlement or court-ordered “first-day” distribution in chapter 11 may deviate from the absolute priority rule.  It suggested only that a court approving these pre-plan distributions must show some respect for – or a “proper solicitude” to – the statutory distributional priorities.

I propose in this paper that, for a proposed pre-plan, priority-skipping settlement with an insider, secured lender or other party who exercises some control over the debtor, the absolute priority rule is sufficiently respected when a bankruptcy court subjects to an auction the claim proposed to be settled.  If at the auction, a third party bids the same or a higher price for the claim absent the priority-skipping, then it will be clear that the initially proposed transaction included a control premium.  If instead a higher third-party bid is not obtained, it will be clear that the settling insider is not paying a discounted settlement price based on its control and that the priority-skipping has a legitimate basis that does not implicate the problem of insider control.  The auction, by displacing suspect hypothetical valuations, can address the precise mischief sought to be remedied by the absolute priority rule.

I further contend that a market test for a “first-day” distribution to a critical vendor, employee or other creditor that is challenged as priority-skipping will be limited to whether the debtor sought and failed to obtain in the market the same good, service, or credit from an alternative supplier on the same or better terms than those proposed in the first-day motion.  The reason for this is simple – a bankruptcy court will not be able in most cases to obtain, at the time of the first-day hearing, a market determination of case-ending distributions to creditors.  Any hypothetical valuation at a first-day hearing of the end-of-case distributions to creditors will be highly unreliable.  Because of these obstacles, I suggest that the question of whether a first-day payment will comport with end-of-case distributional priorities should be replaced with the question of whether the debtor sought and failed to obtain an alternative supply in the market on the same or better terms, and by a rebuttable presumption that preserving the going concern value of the chapter 11 debtor likely will benefit even the disfavored creditors.  This approach – which essentially adopts the occasionally maligned “doctrine of necessity” and rejects the Seventh Circuit’s Kmart rule – recognizes the disturbing weakness of a hypothetical determination, made at the first day hearing, of end-of-case distributions in a chapter 11 case.

The full article is available here.

The Secret Life of Priority: Corporate Reorganization After Jevic, 93 WASH L. REV. 631 (2018)
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Cramdown and Priority, Supreme Court | 0

By Jonathan C. Lipson (Temple University – James E. Beasley School of Law)

The Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp. (In re Jevic) reaffirms that final distributions in chapter 11 cases must follow “absolute” priority absent the “consent” of priority creditors. The Court did not, however, define “consent” for this purpose, which is a problem, because consent can be hard to pinpoint in corporate reorganizations that involve hundreds or thousands of creditors and shareholders.

In this paper, I argue that, although the Jevic majority does not define consent, its reasoning reflects concerns about aspects of the reorganization process that may serve as proxies for it: stakeholder participation, outcome predictability, and procedural integrity.

First, I explain why “consent” is indeterminate in this context, inviting an inspection of process quality. Second, I assess Jevic’s process-value framework. Implementing Jevic’s values is not costless, so the Court’s commitment to them suggests that efficiency — the mantra of many scholars — is not the only or necessarily the most important value in reorganization. Third, I argue that these values conflict with the power that senior secured creditors have gained in recent years to control corporate reorganizations. Many worry that this power is the leading problem in corporate bankruptcy, producing needless expropriation and error. I also sketch opportunities that Jevic creates for scholars and practitioners who share these concerns.

Jevic reveals a secret: “priority” is not only about the order in which a corporate debtor pays its creditors, but also about the process by which it does so.

The full article is available here.

Inequality and Equity in Bankruptcy Reorganization
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Reform, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Cramdown and Priority, Supreme Court | 0

Richard M. Hynes and Steven D. Walt (University of Virginia School of Law).

Courts have developed a series of controversial doctrines that allow a debtor to depart from bankruptcy’s standard priority rules.  In a recent decision, the Supreme Court signaled tolerance of one type of departure, the critical vendor payment, as long as it occurs early in the case and is what an economist would call a strict Pareto improvement: a payment that makes all creditors better off.  This essay demonstrates that Pareto improvements appear in the stated tests governing other departures, including roll-ups and substantive consolidations.  Some scholars, and a few courts, would apply much more permissive tests similar to economists’ Kaldor-Hicks standard and allow deviations as long as the winners gain more than the losers lose.  Still other courts would do away with these doctrines entirely and allow departures only with the consent of the disfavored.  Defending the judicial use of the Pareto standard in reorganizations, the essay further discusses some of the normative considerations in the choice between a Pareto standard, a Kaldor-Hicks standard, and an absolute prohibition.

The full article can be found here.

Applying Jevic: How Courts Are Interpreting and Applying the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Structured Dismissals and Priority Skipping
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Cramdown and Priority, Statutory Interpretation, Supreme Court, Workouts and Pre-Packs | 0

By Shane G. Ramsey and John T. Baxter (Nelson Mullins).

The U.S. Supreme Court in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., 137 S.Ct. 973 (2017), addressed the issue of chapter 11 debtors using structured dismissals to end-run the statutory priority rules. The Court’s ruling preserved the priority system, holding that the bankruptcy court could not approve a structured dismissal of a chapter 11 case that provided for distributions that failed to follow the standard priority rules unless the affected creditors consented to such treatment. Although the Bankruptcy Code does not expressly apply its priority distribution scheme to a structured dismissal, the Court clarified that courts should do so.

As a way to track how bankruptcy courts across the country are applying the ruling in Jevic, the Nelson Mullins Bankruptcy Protector has introduced a new periodic series: the Jevic Files. As of February 19, 2018, the Jevic Files has collected and summarized thirteen cases across twelve jurisdictions. While the majority of the cases involved structured dismissals in the context of a chapter 11 case, courts have also applied the ruling in Jevic to the dismissal of chapter 13 plans; the priority of trustee payments in a chapter 7 case; and even a state court foreclosure hearing that came on the heels of a dismissed chapter 11 case. As Jevic continues to be interpreted and applied in bankruptcy (and other) courts throughout the country, we will continue to keep an updated summary of cases through the Jevic Files.

The article is available here.

The Roundtable has posted on Jevic before, including a report of the case by Melissa Jacoby & Jonathan Lipson and a roundup of law firm perspectives on the Court’s decision and an initial scholarly take on the opinion from Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos. For other Roundtable posts related to priority, see Casey & Morrison, “Beyond Options”; Baird, “Priority Matters”; and Roe & Tung, “Breaking Bankruptcy Priority,” an article that the Jevic opinion referred to.

The Janus Faces of Reorganization Law
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By Vincent S. J. Buccola (University of Pennsylvania – The Wharton School – Legal Studies & Business Ethics Department).

In Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corporation, 137 S. Ct. 973 (2017), the Supreme Court held that bankruptcy courts lack authority to implement structured dismissals that sidestep the absolute priority rule. The bankruptcy judge’s power to resolve cases by dismissal, a power the Bankruptcy Code grants explicitly, is implicitly limited by the norm of waterfall distribution—or so in any case the majority reasoned. The Court’s decision rested on an interpretive default rule. Because distributional priorities are so important to bankruptcy, the Code will be understood to bar departures absent a clear statement. At the same time, however, the Jevic majority went out of its way to distinguish (and seemingly bless) what it called “interim distributions” such as critical vendor orders, notwithstanding their capacity to undermine priorities and their dubious textual basis.

This article argues that this seeming inconsistency in Jevic is no misstep, but that there might be some sense to the conflicting interpretive approaches after all. Two distinctive paradigms now color interpretation of the Bankruptcy Code. One paradigm governs during the early stages of a case and is oriented toward the importance of debtor and judicial discretion to use estate assets for the general welfare. The other paradigm governs a bankruptcy’s conclusion and is oriented toward the sanctity of creditors’ bargained-for distributional entitlements. In combination, they produce what appears to be policy incoherence. But, at least in a world of robust senior creditor influence, a rule under which judicial discretion diminishes over the course of a case—discretion giving way to entitlements—may in fact tend to maximize creditor recoveries.

The full article is available here.

Through Jevic’s Mirror: Orders, Fees, and Settlements
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By Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos (McKinney School of Law, Indiana University)

This article takes the United States Supreme Court’s simple “no” to nonconsensual structured dismissals in Jevic as an opportunity to study its contours. The first issue is the pending clarification on whether the right to object to a structured dismissal is an individual or a class right. An individual right would leave little space for consensual structured dismissals, whereas a class right would fit with the anti-hold-out scheme of reorganization law. Second, Jevic implies increased scrutiny on first-day orders, especially in liquidating reorganizations, pushing for additional caution and negotiation before early payments. Third is the issue of fees—latent in Jevic but burning in the academy—the tension between race-to-the-bottom and race-to-the-top views of jurisdictional competition with the Court’s silence in the foreground. Fourth is the Court’s approval of settlements (via interim orders) that violate priorities provided they promote a bankruptcy goal, as Iridium’s approval did. Fifth, the juxtaposition of the settlements in Iridium and Jevic stresses the importance of the bankruptcy court’s role in approving settlements when the parties’ incentives are biased.

The full article is available here.

The roundtable has posted previously on Jevic, including a report of the case by Melissa Jacoby & Jonathan Lipson and a roundup of law firm perspectives on the Court’s decision. For opposing views on the case leading up to oral argument, see Melissa Jacoby & Jonathan Lipson on their amicus brief and Bruce Grohsgal making the case for structured dismissals. For other Roundtable posts related to priority, see Casey & Morrison, “Beyond Options”; Baird, “Priority Matters”; and Roe & Tung, “Breaking Bankruptcy Priority,” an article that the Jevic opinion referenced.

Post-Jevic, Expansive Interpretation by Bankruptcy Courts Possible
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By Andrew C. Kassner and Joseph N. Argentina, Jr. (Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP)

In Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., 137 S. Ct. 973 (2017), the Supreme Court held that structured dismissals that violate the distribution scheme set forth in the Bankruptcy Code are not permitted.  The Court distinguished such situations from other, somewhat common bankruptcy practices that also violate the Code’s distribution scheme, such as critical vendor orders, employee wage orders, and lender “roll-ups.”  Those practices, the Court noted, “enable a successful reorganization and make even the disfavored creditors better off.”  The question remained, however, how subsequent bankruptcy courts would analyze such practices in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Jevic.

This article summarizes two early post-Jevic decisions and concludes that at least some courts will read the Jevic holding expansively into areas of chapter 11 practice other than structured dismissals.  In In re Fryar, 2017 Bankr. LEXIS 1123 (Apr. 25, 2017), the Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee would not approve a settlement agreement and § 363 sale that provided payment to a lender on account of its prepetition claims.  In In re Pioneer Health Servs., 2017 Bankr. LEXIS 939 (Apr. 4, 2017), the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Mississippi would not permit a hospital debtor to pay three physicians as “critical vendors.”  These courts concluded that Jevic required additional scrutiny of distribution-violating proposals other than structured dismissals.

The full article is available here.

Andrew C. Kassner is the chairman and chief executive officer of Drinker Biddle & Reath, and former chair of its corporate restructuring group. Joseph N. Argentina Jr. is an associate in the firm’s corporate restructuring practice group in the Philadelphia and Wilmington offices. The views expressed in the article are those of Mr. Kassner and Mr. Argentina, and not of Drinker Biddle & Reath.

The roundtable has posted previously on Jevic, including a report of the case by Melissa Jacoby & Jonathan Lipson and a roundup of law firm perspectives on the Court’s decision. For opposing views on the case leading up to oral argument, see Melissa Jacoby & Jonathan Lipson on their amicus brief and Bruce Grohsgal making the case for structured dismissals. For other Roundtable posts related to priority, see Casey & Morrison, “Beyond Options”; Baird, “Priority Matters”; and Roe & Tung, “Breaking Bankruptcy Priority,” an article referred to in the Jevic opinion.

Jevic: Law Firm Perspectives
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Cramdown and Priority | 0

On March 22, the Supreme Court decided Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., holding that bankruptcy courts may not approve structured dismissals that provide for distributions that deviate from ordinary priority rules without the affected creditors’ consent. According to the Court, Chapter 11 contemplates three possibilities: (1) a confirmed plan; (2) conversion to Chapter 7; or (3) dismissal. Absent an affirmative indication of congressional intent, the Court was unwilling to endorse a departure from the Code’s priority scheme; thus, it rejected the Third Circuit’s “rare cases” exception allowing courts to disregard priority in structured dismissals for “sufficient reasons.”

Dechert warns the decision could short-circuit “creative solutions to difficult and unique issues” and impose a “real economic cost” on debtors, creditors, and the courts. PretiFlaherty speculates that Jevic might give additional leverage to priority claimholders who know that debtors and secured creditors now “have one less arrow in their quiver.” More generally, Winston & Strawn predicts bankruptcy professionals will “look to Jevic for insight” when developing exit strategies in difficult cases.

Foley & Lardner highlights the Court’s basic commitment to absolute priority, while noting the Court’s careful distinction between final distributions, which must follow absolute priority, and interim distributions, which may break from priority to serve the Code’s ultimate objectives.

DrinkerBiddle emphasizes that Jevic provides “support for employee wage orders, critical vendor orders, and roll-ups,” a “shot in the arm for the sub rosa plan doctrine,” and “fodder for objections to class-skipping gift plans.” Duane Morris agrees, noting that Jevic may be “cited in unexpected ways” in battles about gift plans, critical vendor payments, and the like.

Sheppard Mullin wonders how consent will be determined in structured dismissals and whether features of plan confirmation other than absolute priority — for instance, cramdown, the bests interest test, and bad faith — will be imported into the structured dismissal context as well.

(By David Beylik, Harvard Law School, J.D. 2018.)

The roundtable has posted previously on Jevic, including a report of the case by Melissa Jacoby & Jonathan Lipson. For opposing views on the case leading up to oral argument, see Melissa Jacoby & Jonathan Lipson on their amicus brief and Bruce Grohsgal making the case for structured dismissals. For other Roundtable posts related to priority, see Casey & Morrison, “Beyond Options”; Baird, “Priority Matters”; and Roe & Tung, “Breaking Bankruptcy Priority,” an article that the Jevic opinion referenced.

Jevic: SCOTUS Holds That Priority Rules Apply in Structured Dismissals
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By Jonathan C. Lipson (Temple University-Beasley School of Law) and Melissa B. Jacoby (University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill School of Law)

The U.S. Supreme Court decided Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., in which we coauthored a brief for amici curiae law professors in support of Petitioners, truck drivers whom Jevic terminated shortly before it filed for bankruptcy. Holding about $8.3 million in priority wage claims, these workers objected to a settlement that Jevic’s shareholders and senior lenders reached with the creditors’ committee. The settlement denied the workers their priority payment, dismissed the bankruptcy, and foreclosed the workers’ rights to challenge under state law the leveraged buyout that led to the bankruptcy. The Third Circuit concluded that such a settlement was permissible in “rare” circumstances. The Supreme Court disagreed, holding that structured dismissals must comply with priority rules absent consent of the affected parties.

Justice Breyer’s majority opinion is notable for at least two reasons. First, it recognizes what was ultimately at stake: the integrity and efficiency of the chapter 11 process. The consequences of failing to reverse, the Court explains, “are potentially serious,” and include “risks of collusion,” “making settlement more difficult to achieve,” and eroding procedural protections that “Congress granted particular classes of creditors,” such as unpaid workers. The Court found no basis in bankruptcy law to allow for exceptions to priority rules in “rare” cases, and seemed to doubt that Jevic was such a case in any event.

Second, consider what Justice Breyer’s decision does not do. It does not, contrary to some reports, prohibit all structured dismissals: “We express no view about the legality of structured dismissals in general,” Justice Breyer noted. The decision also distinguishes the impermissible final distribution in Jevic from interim distributions, such as critical vendor orders, which might deviate from bankruptcy’s priority rules temporarily, but serve other fundamental objectives. By contrast, the Court in Jevic could not find “any significant offsetting bankruptcy-related justification.” The opinion also avoided related issues, such as the propriety of “gift plans” or third-party releases. It shows, however, that Justice Breyer may be the best Justice for the job, if or when the Court chooses to tackle those questions.

The Court’s opinion is available here, and our brief is available here.

The Roundtable posted opposing views on Jevic leading up to oral argument in the case see. See Melissa Jacoby & Jonathan Lipson on their amicus brief and Bruce Grohsgal making the case for structured dismissals. For other Roundtable posts related to priority, see Casey & Morrison, “Beyond Options”; Baird, “Priority Matters”; and Roe & Tung, “Breaking Bankruptcy Priority,” an article that was referenced in the Jevic opinion.

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