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Endeavour International Corp.'s bid to have its chapter 11 case tossed out of court in a structured dismissal has come under fire from unsecured creditors, who say that the deal is skewed to benefit Endeavour's foreign affiliates and a handful of top-ranking creditors at their expense, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In court papers filed Friday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., lawyers for the unsecured creditors’ committee objected to Endeavour's request for a dismissal and instead asked Judge Kevin J. Carey to appoint a trustee to oversee the company's remaining assets. Endeavour, an oil and gas company, plans to hand control of its U.K. assets — the bulk of its business — to a group of senior bondholders in a debt-for-equity swap. Instead of ending its bankruptcy case with a chapter 11 plan that follows specific rules for debt repayment prescribed by Congress, Endeavour and its senior creditors have agreed to set aside money and settle their differences outside the bankruptcy courtroom.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. seeks to challenge a court ruling it claims would halt out-of-court debt restructurings while defending its decision to abandon a bond repayment pledge, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The casino owner, which is fighting to avoid being forced into bankruptcy alongside its main operating unit, wants to immediately appeal a judge’s finding that companies cannot impose changes to bond terms that leave creditors with no way to collect. Caesars claims that the judge set too high a standard for out-of-court restructurings. The bid by Caesars stems from a lawsuit winding its way through New York federal court. In it, bondholders claim Caesars violated the federal Trust Indenture Act by abandoning a repayment pledge as part of a restructuring. Caesars argued that its contract with bondholders allowed it to scrap a promise to guarantee payment on $7 billion in debt under certain circumstances. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan said she needs more evidence before deciding whether Caesars broke the law.

Patriot Coal Corp. on Friday said efforts to firm up a deal with its bankruptcy lenders to finance the sale of its mines have led it to postpone its auction for a second time, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Patriot attorney Stephen Hessler on Friday told a Richmond, Va., bankruptcy judge that the proposed financing from its bankruptcy lenders is leading Blackhawk Mining LLC to revise its bid for the bulk of Patriot’s mines, which in turn will materially change the terms on which Patriot proposes to repay its creditors. As a result, Hessler said that the mining company will extend, albeit briefly, its sale timeline to allow any interested buyers a chance to submit a rival offer based on the new Blackhawk bid.

Bankrupt gunmaker Colt says settlement talks with the landlord of its Connecticut factory are being put at risk by its official committee of unsecured creditors, which wants to bring claims over the facility's lease, Reuters reported today. The committee last month filed a motion seeking an order that would give it standing to bring and settle claims related to Colt's soon-to-expire lease for its West Hartford, Conn., factory. The committee said that its concerns about the lease are rooted in ties between the facility's landlord and Sciens Capital Management, which owns about 87 percent of Colt. It said that the private equity firm is using the lease unfairly to increase its leverage in the case and to discourage possible bidders for Colt.

A Manhattan prosecutor yesterday urged a jury to convict three former executives of Dewey & LeBoeuf for allegedly cooking their law firm's books to defraud lenders and investors, arguing they ordered the fraud even if they did not personally carry it out, Reuters reported yesterday. "They were all intentionally aiding the criminal conduct in this case," Assistant District Attorney Peirce Moser said of former Dewey chairman Stephen Davis, former executive director Stephen DiCarmine and former chief financial officer Joel Sanders. The three men are accused of manipulating the firm's accounts in a failed attempt to avoid its 2012 bankruptcy, which was the largest ever for a U.S. law firm. They each face dozens of counts including grand larceny, conspiracy and falsifying records. The most serious counts, for grand larceny, carry up to 25 years in prison.

Standard General LP, the hedge fund that salvaged much of RadioShack 's business in a bankruptcy buyout earlier this year, is leading a list of objectors trying to block the chapter 11 plan that sets out how the former company will wrap up its final affairs, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In court papers filed on Wednesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., Standard General, which bought the RadioShack name to use in its revival and saved more than 1,700 stores from liquidation, said the money the distressed electronic retailer has set aside to cover its final obligations is "woefully inadequate." Those obligations, Standard General says, include litigation-related expenses linked to the loans the hedge fund and other lenders made last October. Wells Fargo & Co., another lender, also objected to the plan on Wednesday.

Patriot Coal faces several dozen objections to a chapter 11 plan that calls for the sale of its mines, with the federal government, key creditors and its miners’ union among those crying foul, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. Many creditors don’t believe that the company’s plan to sell its mines to new owners is feasible, according to court filings. That includes the official committee representing Patriot’s unsecured creditors, including the miners’ union, a related pension fund, bondholders and the company’s suppliers and vendors. West Virginia’s environmental regulator said that the contingencies involved make Patriot’s plan “nothing more than a wing and a prayer” and is thus “destined to fail.” In court filings, Patriot acknowledged the risk that its sales might not close, among other contingencies. Still, the company said that the “compromises and transactions” at the heart of the plan are fair and provide the best possible recovery to creditors.

A lawyer for Stephen DiCarmine, the former executive director of the once-prominent law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, told a New York jury yesterday not to convict his client based solely on dozens of emails, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. Prosecutors have said that the emails introduced during the three-month trial indicated that DiCarmine had an awareness of accounting shenanigans at the law firm, which collapsed in May 2012. But Austin Campriello, the lawyer for DiCarmine, said that the emails could be misinterpreted and “can be easily misconstrued.” Campriello told the jurors that the emails were untrustworthy without witness testimony to support the incriminating inference that prosecutors wished to draw. In his closing statement on Wednesday, Campriello noted that none of the seven former Dewey employees who pleaded guilty to lesser criminal charges and testified at the three-month trial had directly linked DiCarmine to any improper accounting maneuvers.

A bankruptcy judge said Patriot Coal Corp. must make its top executives available for questioning by West Virginia environmental regulators who are concerned about the coal miner’s upcoming sale, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Phillips at a hearing yesterday denied Patriot’s request to quash the subpoenas brought by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection against Chief Executive Robert Bennett and Chief Operating Officer Michael Day. Through questioning, the environmental agency’s lawyer said that it hopes to address whether Patriot’s plan to sell its mines to new owners and related creditor-payment plan is feasible. Of particular concern is whether one proposed buyer, the nonprofit Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund, will be a successful owner and operator of Patriot’s Federal mining complex and related assets. In fighting the subpoena, Stephen C. Hackney, a Patriot bankruptcy attorney, had argued the executives are “too important” to the company’s continued operations and sale efforts to spare for time-consuming depositions.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled yesterday that a legal battle between junior and senior creditors of the bankrupt division of Caesars Entertainment Corp. should be heard in Chicago rather than New York, Reuters reported yesterday. The chapter 11 filing by the largest casino operator in the U.S., Caesars Entertainment Operating Company, Inc. (CEOC), has been marked by bitter feuding among creditors over everything from when, where and how the bankruptcy was filed. In this case, senior creditors led by Credit Suisse had sought to pursue a lawsuit against junior creditors, including units of Appaloosa Management and Oaktree Capital Management, in New York rather than Chicago, where CEOC filed for bankruptcy. Judge Scheindlin agreed with the junior creditors that it would be more efficient and would likely help resolve the bankruptcy case to send the Credit Suisse case to Chicago.