Delaware Bankruptcy Court Rules That Midstream Gathering Agreements Failed to Create Covenants Running with the Land
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates | 0

By Duston K. McFaul & Juliana Hoffman (Sidley)

Duston K. McFaul
Juliana Hoffman

On October 14, 2020, the honorable Christopher Sontchi, Chief Judge of the Delaware Bankruptcy Court, issued an opinion in the Extraction Oil and Gas bankruptcy case finding that certain oil, gas and water gathering agreements (the “Agreements”) did not create covenants running with the land under Colorado law and are thus subject to rejection in Extraction’s chapter 11 proceedings. The Bankruptcy Court applied Colorado law, which requires that the following three elements be satisfied: (1) the parties must intend to create a covenant running with the land; (2) the covenant must touch and concern the land with which it runs; and (3) there must be privity of estate between the covenanting parties. The Bankruptcy Court analyzed these elements relative to the debtor’s leasehold interest.

The Extraction decision is the Delaware Bankruptcy Court’s first published foray into a recent thicket of gathering agreement litigation that was reignited in 2016 with the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York authorizing the rejection of certain gathering agreements in the Sabine Oil & Gas bankruptcy case. Following Sabine, various oil and gas producers in chapter 11 attempted to use Sabine as a basis for invalidating dedications and shedding minimum volume and other commitments in their own gathering agreements. Such efforts were rebuffed in 2019 by the Colorado Bankruptcy Court in Badlands and by the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in Alta Mesa, each of which analyzed the elements of the asserted covenants running with the land relative to the debtor’s leasehold interest.  The courts in Badlands and Alta Mesa each found that the agreements at issue created valid real property covenants under applicable state law and were thus not executory contracts that could be rejected in bankruptcy.

The Extraction case diverged from Badlands and Alta Mesa in its narrow holding, which analyzed the purported covenants in the context of only the debtor’s mineral estate, and ultimately concluded the midstream agreements did not contain an enforceable covenant running with the land.  The Extraction rulings are currently on appeal before the Delaware District Court.

The full article is available here.

Debt Recharacterization Under State Law
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Jurisprudence, Supreme Court | 0

By James M. Wilton (Ropes & Gray, LLP)

The majority federal law test for recharacterization of insider debt in bankruptcy establishes a multi-factor test drawn from federal tax cases. The test is problematic and has been rejected by Fifth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals in favor of a state law rule of decision. The U.S. Treasury, in fact, has moved away from use of multi-factor tests even in tax cases because they are unworkable and produce “inconsistent and unpredictable results.”

In an article published this month in The Business Lawyer, I predict that the U.S. Supreme Court will resolve the circuit split over debt recharacterization in favor of a state law rule of decision. The article is intended for transactional lawyers interested in structuring transactions to minimize debt recharacterization risk and for bankruptcy litigators interested in understanding the arguments both for and against application of a federal or a state law rule of decision. For the circuits that have endorsed a state law rule of decision for debt recharacterization, the article examines the appropriate test for determining choice of law and surveys the substantive state law of debt recharacterization in thirteen jurisdictions, including New York and Delaware.

The article concludes that debt recharacterization under state law allows equity sponsors and other corporate insiders to provide credit support to distressed businesses, with greater assurance that loans will be enforceable both under state law and in bankruptcy court.

The full article is available here.1

  1. ©2019. Published in The Business Lawyer, Vol. 74, Winter 2018-2019, by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder.