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September 18,
2006
Airlines
id='1'>Judge Prohibits Strikes
at Northwest
A federal judge blocked
flight attendants at Northwest Airlines from striking over cuts in pay
and benefits, ruling on Friday that such action could threaten the
struggling carrier's comeback from bankruptcy protection, the
Washington Post
reported on Saturday. In reversing a decision by a
bankruptcy judge, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero wrote that the
flight attendants had not exhausted 'every reasonable effort to settle
disputes' and could not resort to strikes.
w:st='on'>
size='3'>Marrero
U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The union
representing Northwest's 9,300 flight attendants said that it would
appeal
size='3'>Marrero's decision and
continue to prepare for possible strikes and other actions. The
attendants disputed the judge's assertion that they had not done
everything they could to settle the dispute.
href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/15/AR2006091501020_pf.html'>Read
more.
id='2'>Bankruptcy Judge's
Ruling Tossed in Mesaba Case
A district court judge
has reversed a bankruptcy court’s decision to allow bankrupt
Mesaba Airlines Inc. to void its collective bargaining agreements with
its labor unions,
size='3'>Portfolio Media reported on Friday.
Three unions appealed U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Gregory Kishel’s July
decision to grant Mesaba the right to terminate its labor agreements.
Though U.S. District Judge Michael Davis affirmed the bankruptcy
court’s ruling that some of the non-negotiable terms proposed by
Mesaba—namely six-year contracts and a 19.4 percent reduction in
costs—were necessary and that Mesaba’s insistence on them
wasn’t evidence of bad faith, he pointed to Mesaba’s refusal
to negotiate on the issue of wage restoration or “snap back”
provisions as a factor in his decision to reverse.
w:st='on'>
size='3'>Davis
concluded that Mesaba failed to show that its proposals “fairly
and equitably” distributed the burdens attendant to its
restructuring among the affected parties—particularly
Mesaba’s parent company, MAIR Holdings.
Utah
Senator Wants Tithing
Rights Protected in Bankruptcy
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)
wants the Justice Department to correct what he and other senators see
as a 'misinterpretation' in a decision made in a
w:st='on'>
York bankruptcy case
dealing with charitable contributions, the Salt Lake Deseret Morning
News reported today. Late last month, the court decided that
certain people at higher income levels who are in chapter 13 repayment
plans cannot deduct charitable contributions when calculating their
disposable income. 'For people of faith in
w:st='on'>
size='3'>America
the obligation to tithe presents a significant part of the free exercise
of religion, which is guaranteed to all Americans under the First
Amendment,' Hatch wrote in a letter, along with Sen. Charles Grassley
(R-Iowa) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), to Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales. They want Gonzales 'to file court papers in appropriate cases
to correct this misinterpretation, as well as issue mandatory guidance
to chapter 13 trustees so that they not object to reasonable charitable
contributions in chapter 13 repayment plans.'
href='http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,650191566,00.html'>Read
more.
id='4'>‘Bold Moves’ at
Ford Not Bold Enough for Wall St.
Financial analysts were
critical of Ford Motor Co.’s latest revamping vision, in which it
called for 44,000 job cuts, acknowledged that it would not make a profit
in North America until 2009 at the earliest and conceded that it could
not keep up with its surging Japanese rival
w:st='on'>
New York Times
size='3'>reported today. “This plan sounds a lot like the January
plan, and the January plan didn’t work,” said John Casesa,
managing partner of Casesa Strategic Advisers in
w:st='on'>
York. Among the actions
analysts have anticipated, but that Ford did not say it would take, are
the sale of noncore assets, faster product introductions and deeper
capacity reductions. Ford had previously said it was exploring a sale of
its British sports car brand, Aston Martin, but on Friday insisted that
it was not looking to unload its money-losing Jaguar brand, its weakened
Mercury brand or a stake in its credit operations.
href='http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/business/18ford.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&pagewanted=print'>Read
more.
id='5'>Judges Look to Speed
Metabolife Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy Judge
John Hargrove
size='3'>has threatened to convert Metabolife's chapter 11 bankruptcy
into a chapter 7 case, which would place it in the hands of a federal
trustee and dissolve its official bankruptcy committees, the
San Diego
Union-Tribune reported yesterday. Despite more
than a year of legal wrangling and negotiations, the various parties
involved in the San Diego-based company’s bankruptcy have yet to
agree on a plan for settling hundreds of personal-injury claims related
to Metabolife's now-defunct Ephedra diet pill. While the bankruptcy has
halted all litigation against the Metabolife corp., U.S. District Judge
Jed Rakoff of
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>New York
has threatened to lift a stay on federal personal injury
lawsuits against retailers and Metabolife's three shareholders, who've
been named as co-defendants with the company in many of the personal
injury actions. Judge Hargrove has set an Oct. 4 hearing on whether to
convert the chapter 11 to chapter 7. Rakoff has set an Oct. 5 date for
deciding whether to lift the stay.
href='http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20060917-9999-1b17ephedra.html'>Read
more.
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size='3'>
id='6'>Oneida
Chapter 11
Oneida Ltd. Announced on
Friday that it completed its $170 million exit financing and emerged
from chapter 11 as a privately held company, according to a company
press release on Friday. The company's new shareholders are led by
Quadrangle Group LLC and also include JPMorgan, Litespeed Partners LLC
and D. E. Shaw Laminar Portfolios, L.L.C. Oneida's prenegotiated plan of
reorganization was confirmed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the
Southern District of New York on Aug. 30. Concurrent with its emergence
from chapter 11,
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>Oneida
entered into a $170 million senior secured long-term
credit facility led by Credit Suisse, consisting of an $80 million
asset-based revolving credit facility and a $90 million term
loan.
common and preferred stockholders will not receive any distributions
under the plan and their equity was cancelled as of the plan's effective
date.
href='http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/news.html?d=105323'>Read
more.
w:st='on'>
size='3'>
id='7'>Decker
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>'s Bankruptcy
Continues
A year after
size='3'>Decker
face='Times New Roman'
size='3'>College
for bankruptcy, the criminal investigation into the conduct of Decker's
former administration is still ongoing and Decker's bankruptcy trustee
Robert Keats predicts a two- or three-year process before there's a
resolution, the Associated Press reported yesterday. When Decker
College, a for-profit school based in Louisville, Ky., collapsed in
October 2005, it had about 3,700 students at campuses in Louisville,
Atlanta, Indianapolis and Jacksonville, Fla. It also had the U.S.
Attorney's office, the FBI and the Department of Education's inspector
general investigating it for possible violations of federal law,
including conspiracy to commit fraud, wire fraud, financial aid fraud
and giving false statements to the federal government.
href='http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/state/15539361.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp'>Read
more.
w:st='on'>
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id='8'>Texas
Bankruptcy
An ambulance service with
contracts in
size='3'>Edinburg
County
w:st='on'>
size='3'>Texas
financial collapse because the federal government is not reimbursing its
Medicare claims, the
size='3'>McAllen
size='3'>(
face='Times New Roman'
size='3'>Texas
Monitor reported yesterday. “We feel
they have denied legitimate claims,” said Valley Emergency Medical
Service president Noe Ramon. “So, we have filed a lawsuit.”
Ramon sued the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid on June 16 after they
froze Medicare claim payments for a second 180-day audit. Medicare
reimbursements account for 60 percent of the companies revenue,
according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern
District of Texas.
href='http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14876276/'>Read
more.
id='9'>Commentary: As Traditional
Pension Plans Decline, Workers Face a Less Certain Future
Many companies, such as
Verizon, I.B.M. and more recently DuPont, with traditional pensions have
decided to freeze, terminate or alter the terms of their employees'
retirement packages and it is a trend that is likely to continue,
according to a
size='3'>Washington Post commentary yesterday.
There are currently about 22 million workers, 19 percent of active
private-sector employees, that have traditional pension plans, compared
with 39 percent three decades ago, according to federal government
statistics. Jack VanDerhei, a professor in the business school at Temple
University and a research fellow at the nonprofit Employee Benefit
Research Institute, said that workers fortunate enough to still have
traditional pensions should not rely on them too much for retirement, as
the long-term prospects of such plans are increasingly in doubt. While a
new law signed last month by President Bush aims to shore up the private
pension system by forcing companies to fund their plans more fully, some
retirement consultants say the added expense may accelerate the trend of
companies limiting their plans for existing employees or dropping them
for new hires.
href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600124.html'>Read
more.