San Bernardino, Calif.’s bankruptcy judge chose an unusual way to help decide whether the city should enjoy her court’s protection from creditors while it renegotiates debts, Bloomberg News reported today. Instead of scheduling a multi-day trial with platoons of attorneys, a parade of witnesses and boxes of evidence, Bankruptcy Judge Meredith M. Jury will give a handful of lawyers a few hours today in her courtroom to debate the city’s eligibility to file under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code’s chapter 9. Judge Jury is streamlining the approach taken in the four other large municipal bankruptcies filed since 1998, those of Vallejo and Stockton, Calif., Jefferson County, Alabama; and most recently Detroit, which last month filed the largest ever chapter 9 case. Detroit is on track for an eligibility hearing in October, while Vallejo, Stockton and Jefferson County needed only weeks or months to convince judges they qualified for protection. San Bernardino, on the other hand, has waited more than a year to reach this stage. The San Bernardino case has been mired in court fights pitting the city against its creditors and the creditors against each other.
