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A Utah gun manufacturer, locked in a three-year legal battle with convicted felon Ralph Merrill, has filed for bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Vector Arms Corp. — the “source for the best AK47 and *UZI’s on the market” — faces big legal bills in a dispute over whether Merrill sold the company’s gun-making equipment and inventory to current owner and president Jason Maughn in 2011. That sale came after Merrill lost his firearms manufacturing license in an illegal scheme to use China-made bullets to fill a $298 million ammunition order for Afghanistan Security Forces.

With available funds dwindling and millions in claims pending over the January 2014 Elk River chemical leak, the Freedom Industries bankruptcy case appears to be at a crossroads, the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reported yesterday. No clear plan for resolving the case is in sight, prompting U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ronald Pearson to schedule a “status conference” early next month to ask various interested parties for options. Judge Pearson called the conference, set for 10 a.m. March 3, to ask for input “with respect to how this case should be administered to conclusion utilizing the limited resources available to obtain the best results for the public and parties in interest,” the judge said in a three-page order entered on Feb. 6. In the ruling, Judge Pearson noted that more than $200 million in claims have been filed against Freedom Industries, with most of that accounted for by 3,800 damage claims filed by victims of the Jan. 9, 2014, leak that contaminated the regional drinking water supply.

General Motors Co. will be in court today fighting to maintain a bankruptcy shield blocking legal claims from customers seeking compensation for declining resale values and injuries stemming from a defective ignition switch, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The switch has been tied to at least 56 deaths and stems from a safety lapse that Chief Executive Mary Barra has said arose from a “pattern of incompetence and neglect.” But today’s legal battle, with plaintiffs seeking billions of dollars in damages, is also largely the result of a significant concession GM made more than five years ago to expedite its emergence from bankruptcy proceedings. The automaker finds itself back in Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber’s courtroom because that deal weakened the very bankruptcy shield that GM is now trying to keep. Judge Gerber presided over GM’s government-backed restructuring and is essentially revisiting details of the case to decide whether plaintiffs can sue for losses associated with vehicles made before the company’s restructuring. The plaintiffs want GM stripped of its bankruptcy shield. GM for more than a decade failed to recall vehicles equipped with switches prone to jostling out of the run position and cutting power to air bags and other safety features.

The Family Christian chain has filed for bankruptcy protection, saying that sales of its religious books, music and church supplies at its 266 retail stores have steadily fallen for years, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported yesterday. Officials who put the Michigan-based chain into chapter 11 protection on Wednesday said that they already have a buyer who promised to keep the 3,100-worker chain — which is one of the country's largest retailers of Christian products — open for business. Its stores are located in 36 states.

Revel AC Inc., the bankrupt Atlantic City, New Jersey, casino owner, asked a judge to penalize its power provider for planning to cut off electricity on Feb. 5, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Revel said in court papers yesterday that it received a letter from ACR Energy Partners LLC over the weekend announcing its plan to terminate service, which the casino company called a violation of the Bankruptcy Code’s automatic stay. ACR Energy should be fined $10 million for shutting off the power, plus $1 million a day until the juice is restored, Revel said in the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Camden, N.J.

A U.S. federal appeals court has delayed the sale of the shuttered Revel Casino in Atlantic City pending an appeal by a company that ran its nightclub and boardwalk dance club, Reuters reported on Saturday. The order, issued late on Friday by Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Court Judge Thomas Ambro, gives attorneys for Revel until Tuesday to respond to the appeal filed by IDEA Boardwalk, Llc. The company, along with several restaurants which had also leased space inside the casino, had lost a challenge to the sale in a Jan. 21 federal court. The sale to Florida developer Glen Straub, who bought Revel in bankruptcy court for $95.4 million, was expected to be completed by Feb. 7. The nightclub appealed that order, claiming the sale could cost it some $16 million it had invested to build bars, bathrooms and sound systems as part of its 25-year lease.