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NextEra Energy failed to persuade skeptical utility regulators in Texas to take another look at its stalled $18.4 billion bid for Oncor Electric Delivery, Bloomberg News reported. The Public Utility Commission of Texas yesterday refused NextEra’s second request for a rehearing on a deal which it originally rejected in April. The sale of the biggest transmission operator in the state is key to rescuing Oncor’s parent Energy Future Holdings Corp. from bankruptcy. Both Oncor and NextEra declined to comment. “It is time to bring this chapter in the EFH bankruptcy to a close and consider other options more suitable to Oncor and its ratepayers,” Commissioner Kenneth Anderson Jr. wrote in a memorandum before yesterday’s meeting.

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel may have to open his books to Gawker Media's bankrupt estate after a judge yesterday said that Gawker had shown "good cause" for additional discovery in a years-long legal battle, Forbes.com reported. The decision is a win for the now-defunct Gawker, which was forced into bankruptcy last summer in the wake of an invasion of privacy lawsuit brought by former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan and funded by Thiel. Gawker's estate is currently considering a separate lawsuit against Thiel for his role in bankrolling the Hogan case. While the company's protracted bankruptcy winds down, lawyers for its estate still want answers to basic questions about Thiel's involvement, including when he became involved in funding litigation against Gawker and how much money he's spent doing so. Yesterday’s decision by Bankruptcy Judge <b>Stuart Bernstein</b> did not allow for discovery immediately, but rather directs lawyers for both sides to agree on a narrowed scope of the inquiry in advance. If that doesn't happen, Judge Bernstein will likely have to issue another ruling on the matter this summer.

Westinghouse Electric Co. was dealt another blow on Tuesday when its chances of getting nearly $2 billion for its doomed acquisition of a nuclear construction firm were extinguished by the Delaware Supreme Court, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. The Cranberry, Pa.-based nuclear technology firm is working through a complicated bankruptcy caused in large part by its December 2015 acquisition of Stone & Webster from Chicago Bridge & Iron. For more than a year, Westinghouse has been asserting that it is due $2.15 billion for that deal. Since 2008, Westinghouse and Stone & Webster had been partners in building the first four new nuclear plants in the U.S. in three decades. The projects are worth tens of billions of dollars and by late 2015, all the major parties involved — Westinghouse, Stone & Webster, and the utilities that commissioned those plants in Georgia and South Carolina — were suing each other, arguing about who bears responsibility for delays and $2 billion in cost overruns.

The trustee recouping money for Bernard Madoff's victims has reached more than $23 million of settlements with the estates of the swindler's late sons and related defendants, ending more than eight years of litigation, Reuters reported yesterday. According to a court filing yesterday, the settlement will strip the estates of Andrew and Mark Madoff of "all assets, cash, and other proceeds" of their father's fraud, leaving them with a respective $2 million and $1.75 million. The estates also agreed to withdraw roughly $99.5 million of claims against the bankruptcy estate of the former Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, the filing shows. Yesterday’s settlement resolves some the highest-profile cases remaining in trustee Irving Picard’s efforts to compensate former Madoff customers whom he estimates lost $17.5 billion. He has recovered $11.6 billion, or about two-thirds of that sum. Read more.

For a further analysis of commercial fraud, make sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s Fraud and Forensics: Piercing Through the Deception in a Commercial Fraud Case. 

Carmakers may end up shouldering the bulk of the costs of replacing the estimated 100 million defective airbags made by Takata Corp. after the company filed for the biggest postwar bankruptcy by a Japanese manufacturer, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. yesterday issued separate statements saying they may not be reimbursed for the majority of their recall-related claims by Takata, which earlier filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and Japan. Seventeen vehicle makers including BMW AG and Tesla Inc. were named as unsecured creditors with unknown claims related to recalls and indemnification, according to Takata’s chapter 11 filing, which listed more than $10 billion in liabilities. Takata is unable to disclose the exact total of its liabilities as the company hasn’t reached an agreement on how to split the recall costs with the automakers. Tokyo-based Takata also announced an agreement on a sale to Key Safety Systems Inc. for 175 billion yen ($1.6 billion). The U.S. air-bag maker owned by China’s Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp. will substantially retain all of Takata’s employees worldwide and the acquisition of the businesses and bankruptcy proceedings are expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2018.

The founder of a website that gives betting advice to gamblers is suing the owner of sports website Deadspin for defamation over an article that questioned his honesty and claimed he was profiting at his customers’ expense, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. RJ Bell, a Las Vegas oddsmaker who runs Pregame.com, alleges that the June 2016 article contains false and libelous statements that have hurt his reputation and cost him business. The lawsuit was filed on Thursday in New York state court against Gawker Media’s successor Gizmodo Media Group and the article’s author. Bell is seeking at least $10 million plus punitive damages. Bell is being represented by Charles Harder, the same lawyer who represented Hulk Hogan in his lawsuit against Gawker Media over the publication of the professional wrestler’s sex tape. Gawker was ultimately forced into bankruptcy following a $140 million judgment against it in the Hogan case. That lawsuit against Gawker was financed by venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who had been angered by an article published nearly a decade earlier that identified him as gay. Deadspin and its sister sites — but not Gawker.com — were ultimately sold following a bankruptcy auction to Univision Communications Inc.