Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Bennett blocked a legal bid to force Alabama's Jefferson County to keep running a hospital that serves the poor, which the county says it can no longer afford to operate, Reuters reported yesterday. Birmingham, the state's largest city and located in Jefferson County, had asked Judge Bennett to exempt it from a ban on lawsuits against the County so that it could press a claim in state court that the county's underused Cooper Green Mercy Hospital must maintain in-patient and emergency services. Birmingham and county residents do not want to lose the hospital's services. But Judge Bennett said in a 37-page opinion that Birmingham was unlikely to win its case in state court and that he saw no reason to lift automatic stays against lawsuits that Jefferson County has had in place since its landmark, $4.23 billion bankruptcy petition filed on Nov. 9, 2011.
To learn more about issues in chapter 9, be sure to pick up the latest ABI publication, Municipalities in Peril: The ABI Guide to Chapter 9, Second Edition, now up for pre-order in ABI's Bookstore.