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Three California communities are appealing a bankruptcy judge’s recent decision that said Peabody Energy Corp.’s bankruptcy plan protects it from global-warming lawsuits, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The counties of San Mateo and Marin, and the city of Imperial Beach filed an appeal in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in St. Louis on Sunday, roughly a month after Judge Barry Schermer ruled that discharge and injunction provisions included in the coal-mining company’s reorganization plan extinguish the lawsuits. The lawsuits, which were filed in the months after Peabody’s exit from bankruptcy protection in April, look to hold more than three dozen oil, gas and coal companies liable for greenhouse-gas emissions produced over the decades. In the lawsuits, the California communities connect these emissions to global climate change and rising sea levels, which they say has made them more vulnerable to flooding and other dangers. The lawsuits claim that Peabody, for decades, exported substantial amounts of coal from California. Court papers also show the communities believe the company has been linked to groups that sought to undermine climate science and the connection between emissions and global warming and rising sea levels.

Peter Thiel is demanding that he be given the chance to bid on Gawker.com, the gossip and news website he helped drive out of business and which is now being shopped in bankruptcy, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Lawyers representing Thiel said in papers filed on Wednesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York that the billionaire venture capitalist is “the most able and logical purchaser” of Gawker.com but that, so far, his overtures have been rebuffed by the administrator overseeing the sale process. Thiel’s interest in the website, which has been dormant since August 2016, adds a new twist to the continuing legal wrangling between him and publisher of the blog, Gawker Media LLC. Thiel secretly financed Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against the publisher, the ruling on which by a jury forced the Gawker Media and its founder Nick Denton into chapter 11 last year and, ultimately, out of business. The filing also raises a new question about the ultimate fate of Gawker.com and its archive. The Wall Street Journal reported in October that the sale process had put Gawker’s articles at risk of being deleted. A new owner of Gawker.com would be free to remove old articles from the website. Assets for sale include the Gawker domain, social media accounts and nearly 200,000 published articles.

Takata has signed a definitive agreement to sell nearly all of its operations to rival Key Safety Systems for $1.59 billion as part of its bankruptcy reorganization, CFO Magazine reported. The proceeds from the sale will be used to cover legal costs resulting from the exploding airbag scandal that drove Takata into chapter 11 in June. The deal does not include the problematic ammonium nitrate airbag inflator business, which will be run by the reorganized Takata and eventually will be wound down. Chinese-owned Key Safety beat out nearly a half dozen competitors to win a stalking-horse bid to acquire Takata out of bankruptcy.