Trustee Curtis R. Smith, who is responsible for distributing cash to Borders creditors, says that the company did its part to notify all of its creditors, including gift-card holders, of the June 1, 2011, deadline to file a claim in the chapter 11 case it launched in January 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. Smith said that the gift-card holders got a second chance to redeem their cards in the nearly four months of between the claim deadline and the chain's closing. "The gift card holders had multiple opportunities to act and mitigate any loss by either redeeming their gift cards or timely filing proofs of claim," Smith said in court papers filed on Friday. The trustee also took issue with the surprise the gift-card holders expressed at Borders's demise. Not only was Borders's chapter 11 filing "widely publicized" in news articles that advised people to use their gift cards as soon as possible, but the chain's eventual liquidation also was the topic of "numerous" articles.
