Lawyers for Detroit’s financial creditors and for Oakland and Macomb counties tried yesterday to convince Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes to delay Detroit’s case because city lawyers aren’t releasing critical documents quickly enough to meet ambitious timetables for this summer’s confirmation trial on the plan to exit the nation’s largest-ever municipal bankruptcy, the Detroit Free-Press reported yesterday. Lawyers for creditors including Syncora — a bond insurer that’s on the hook for nearly $250 million because it guaranteed a disastrous $1.4 billion debt deal meant to shore up underfunded pensions in 2005 — argued that delays in the city’s release of documents that creditors have requested make the schedule impossible to follow. Syncora and other creditors earlier this week asked Judge Rhodes to delay the confirmation hearing by nearly a month, pushing the beginning of the confirmation hearings to Aug. 26. The creditors’ lawyers say that the expert witnesses they plan to use during the extensive hearings won’t have enough time to expertly analyze and report on city financial assumptions without the delay.
