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A federal judge today ruled against Detroit pension beneficiaries who had appealed the city’s final bankruptcy plan of adjustment, the post-bankruptcy blueprint for city finances and operations after it emerged from the nation’s largest-ever municipal insolvency, the Detroit Free Press reported today. U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman tossed out appeals by city retirees who had asked the federal court to remove pension cuts from the city’s December 2014 bankruptcy settlement with thousands of creditors, deals that helped the city shed $7 billion in debt. The retirees, including members of the Detroit Active and Retired Employee Association (DAREA), had sought full restoration of pension benefits, even though a majority of retirees in the city’s General Retirement System voted to accept the settlement. Detroit’s lawyers asked Judge Friedman to reject the appeals, arguing they were “equitably moot,” a legal doctrine that says a bankruptcy exit plan shouldn’t be reopened once it is substantially consummated, because doing so could hinder the success of the plan and harm other parties who’ve reached settlements.

A bankruptcy judge yesterday authorized clergy sexual abuse victims to begin voting on a $21 million settlement with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which seeks to lay the archdiocese's nearly five-year-old chapter 11 case to rest, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Court records show that Bankruptcy Judge Susan Kelley approved a plain-language version of the archdiocese's chapter 11 reorganization plan, at the heart of which is the settlement. The document will be sent out for a vote by victims and other creditors. Following the vote, the plan will still require final approval from Judge Kelley at a hearing scheduled for Nov. 9.

The former RadioShack won final court approval of its chapter 11 plan Wednesday after brokering key settlements with lenders that paved the way for the former electronics retailer to secure a judge’s signature on the proposal, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Brendan Shannon said following a hearing that he would sign off on both the settlements and the chapter 11 plan, which distributes proceeds from the company’s liquidation to its creditors. Burdened with more than $1 billion in debt, RadioShack filed for bankruptcy protection in February and shut down or sold off almost all of its 4,000-store chain. Under its chapter 11 plan, the corporate remains of what was once RadioShack will pay most secured lenders in full but will leave little behind for lower-ranking creditors.

Landlords are up in arms over grocer Haggen's high-speed retreat from a rapid West Coast expansion that landed the company in bankruptcy, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. More than 100 stores will be shut down to pay off lenders that financed the disastrous growth spurt, and landlords say the company is taking inappropriate shortcuts. The decision to close down most of Haggen's stores was announced just weeks into the chapter 11 proceeding, less than a year after a deal that transformed the long-time Pacific Northwest grocery chain into a regional player.

The owner of World Law Debt accused the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of violating U.S. bankruptcy laws when agency officials took the company's property on Aug. 20 during a legal battle over the debt-settlement firm's services, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In court papers, World Law Debt owner Derin Scott said that agency officials who took steps to shut down the debt-settlement firm, which filed for bankruptcy in February, did so with "total disregard of the procedures and safeguards of the bankruptcy." Firms under bankruptcy protection are immune from property seizures, unless a federal judge grants an exception. Scott's accusations were raised in a federal lawsuit that the consumer agency filed against the Austin, Texas-based firm on Aug. 17.

Rhode Island’s legislative leaders plan to hold hearings into what went wrong in the state’s failed $75 million deal with Curt Schilling’s video game company 38 Studios, the Associated Press reported yesterday. The news came one day after a court released tens of thousands of pages of documents in a lawsuit brought by the state’s economic development agency against the former Red Sox pitcher and others who played a part in the 2010 deal. The company declared bankruptcy in 2012. Dozens of people were deposed, but key figures including Schilling were not. Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed both said that their respective oversight committees would sift through the documents, then hold hearings.

A New York judge urged warring creditors of Arch Coal to continue out-of-court negotiations over a refinancing plan for the second-largest U.S. coal miner, Reuters reported on Friday.  New York-based GSO Special Situations Master Fund LP, which holds some of Arch Coal's unsecured notes, last week sued a group of investors that hold the company's loans, alleging that they are trying to block a crucial debt swap proposed by the miner. In July, Arch Coal announced an offer to swap existing notes for longer-term securities as part of a restructuring plan that, if successful, could save the company from bankruptcy. Like other highly leveraged miners, Arch Coal is suffering from falling coal demand, stricter regulation and sinking coal prices, triggering concerns of a chapter 11 filing in the absence of a coal recovery and more-manageable debt costs. The deadline for the exchange, which has been extended several times, is now Oct. 26.

A group representing victims of a deadly 2012 meningitis outbreak has sticker shock over the bill submitted by a bankruptcy trustee who tracked down funds to pay them, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The plaintiffs' steering committee, which represents 322 claimants in a multidistrict case against New England Compounding Center, is asking a bankruptcy court to write down the $3.75 million fee for the services of trustee Paul D. Moore and his law firm Duane Morris LLP , saying that no one agreed to pay so much. For three years, Moore has served as the bankruptcy trustee administering the chapter 11 case of NECC, a compounding pharmacy that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said caused the death of at least 64 people and sickened more than 750 others with tainted steroid injections.

Affiliates of Paul Singer’s Elliott Management are again attempting to thwart the sale of Relativity Media LLC, a Hollywood film and TV studio, at a bankruptcy auction next week, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In preliminary objections filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, the affiliates, Heatherden Securities LLC and Manchester Securities Corp., said the sale process has advanced too quickly and ignores the firms’ rights. Manchester, which is one of Relativity’s biggest lenders and has about $138 million on the line, has also complained that the sale process will likely leave it penniless. Lawyers for Heatherden said in court papers that the firm “continues to believe that [Relativity’s] business has substantially greater value than is likely to be achieved through the proposed sale, and that it is not a foregone conclusion that this value cannot be made available to the estates and their creditors.”

Saratoga Resources Inc.'s shareholders want the chance to propose a restructuring plan for the oil-and-gas producer, citing the allegedly "increasing dysfunction" of the company's board and lenders' iron grip on its bankruptcy, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The official committee of equity holders has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Lafayette, La., to terminate Saratoga's exclusive restructuring plan filing rights to open the field to rival proposals, expressing a desire to file its own proposal that will preserve the value of Saratoga's equity. In court filings, Saratoga's lawyers have said that it has acted properly in connection with its restructuring, including having an independent committee oversee the process.