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Some of the world’s biggest oil companies are chipping in to repay victims of a deadly train derailment, but unless a bankruptcy judge says otherwise, the amounts they’re paying will remain secret, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Insurers, oil companies and others will together pay several hundred million dollars to compensate those affected by the 2013 derailment of a crude oil-carrying train in Canada. After the crash, the train operator filed for bankruptcy and began pursuing litigation in an effort to compensate those who were injured, lost their lives or had their businesses damaged when the runaway train crashed into a small Quebec town and exploded. The terms of the settlement aim to shield the specific dollar amount that companies like Royal Dutch Shell PLC , Marathon Oil Corp., ConocoPhillips and Irving Oil Ltd. would each pitch in to what has grown to become a $345 million fund. A Justice Department watchdog urged a bankruptcy judge to expose the dollar amounts, arguing that efforts to keep them secret “violate the strong public policy in favor of public access to documents filed with the bankruptcy court.” The watchdog said that other courts have rejected the argument that making the figures public will hurt the companies’ chances in future litigation. The bankruptcy judge will consider making other companies’ contributions public at a June 23 hearing.

The New Jersey Casino Control Commission said yesterday that it would allow investor Carl Icahn own the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported today. The state gambling regulators are allowing Icahn, who already owns the Tropicana Casino and Resort, to acquire the troubled Taj Mahal from bankruptcy court. The billionaire will be taking $292 million of parent company Trump Entertainment Resorts’ debt and put it toward ownership of the company. He will invest as much as $100 million to keep the property open after bankruptcy.

NextEra Energy Inc. has emerged as the frontrunner in an auction for bankrupt Energy Future Holdings Corp.’s Oncor Electric Delivery Co., Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Energy Future could name NextEra the stalking-horse bidder for its 80 percent stake in Oncor, which is the biggest owner and operator of power lines in Texas, in the next few weeks. Oncor is worth more than $10 billion, its chief executive said in April. Oncor is the crown jewel of Dallas-based Energy Future, which filed for chapter 11 protection last April after taking on too much debt in a $48 billion leveraged buyout, the largest on record. Oncor is considered a prize because Texas is adding electricity customers and state regulators support power line investments. A squabble among creditors over the fate of Oncor derailed Energy Future’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy in less than a year. “It’s a great regulated franchise and has good growth,” Kit Konolige, a utility analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, said yesterday. “NextEra has already done some transmission in Texas and they feel like they have some institutional knowledge in the state.”

Nearly seven years after collapsing, Lehman Brothers still has $15 billion in assets and $68 billion in claims to resolve, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The failed investment bank said in a filing that it is now focusing its attention on litigation and contested claims that have yet to be settled. "The wind-down is entering a phase during which increasingly more court resources will be required to advance the process and provide final resolution and distributions to creditors," Lehman said in its annual "state of the estate" filing made with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York on Tuesday.

Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP former controller told a jury yesterday that years before the law firm collapsed, Dewey’s accounting department scrambled to avoid trouble with its banks by making the firm’s income appear higher than it was, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In January 2009, with just days to find a way to boost 2008 income by $25 million, members of the department used fraudulent adjustments to get the numbers where they wanted them, former controller Thomas Mullikin said during the third week of a criminal trial of Dewey’s three top leaders, accused of conspiring to defraud the firm’s banks and creditors. Mullikin is the first of seven cooperating witnesses to take the stand for the Manhattan district attorney’s office in what is expected to be a six-month-long trial. He pleaded guilty to a scheme to defraud in the first degree tied to his actions in Dewey’s accounting department, and prosecutors will recommend Mullikin receive five months in a Manhattan detention center.

Setting up a possible showdown with CalPERS, two bond firms are reviving their legal campaign to win a bigger share of the money being doled out by bankrupt San Bernardino, Calif., the Sacramento (Calif.) Bee reported today. Luxembourg bank EEPK and bond insurer Ambac Assurance Corp. filed appeal notices to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Appeals Panel this week challenging San Bernardino’s decision to pay its full pension obligations to CalPERS. Their lawsuit was dismissed last month by Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury. The two companies would recover 1 percent of an estimated $59 million debt under San Bernardino’s plan. They say that it’s unfair to pay CalPERS its full annual payment, which exceeds $24 million a year, while repaying them next to nothing.

Prosecutors in the criminal trial of three former Dewey & LeBoeuf executives for the first time yesterday presented evidence that suggested the defendants lied to their bankers about how the now-defunct firm spent the money it received from lenders, the American Lawyer reported today. Instead of spending a $125 million long-term loan on capital improvements, Dewey & LeBoeuf paid its partners with the cash, suggested firm emails presented by prosecutors with the New York County District Attorney’s Office. Some emails also showed various defendants asking banks for more money in their credit line on the grounds that Dewey & LeBoeuf needed the additional capital to cover lateral expenses, while internally the very same executives were discussing the growing need for cash to pay current partners what they were owed.

Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd., the company behind a deadly 2013 oil train derailment in Quebec, Monday has another $110 million for its fund to help compensate the victims of the crash, the Wall Street Journal reported today. World Fuels Services, the company that owned the oil shipment, said that it has agreed to pay into the compensation fund established for the victims of the derailment. The oil supplier’s contribution brings the amount raised for the victims’ fund to $345 million (C$431,500,000). MM&A sought the protection of U.S. and Canadian courts in August 2013 after being hit with an avalanche of personal-injury, wrongful-death and environmental claims following the derailment of an unmanned train carrying crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken region, which leveled the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, and killed 47 people.

Barclays Plc won a London court case seeking repayment of a $540,000 loan to a former partner at collapsed law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP, Bloomberg News reported today. The bank lent money to Londell McMillan in 2010 so that he could contribute capital along with the other partners in the firm. Dewey filed for bankruptcy protection two years later and Barclays called in loans made to about 220 partners totaling about $56 million. McMillan, an entertainment attorney who has represented Michael Jackson, Prince and Stevie Wonder, argued that the loan was for the firm’s benefit. Judge Andrew Popplewell disagreed. McMillan was “at times unwilling to accept what was plain on the face of documents and seemed to me to have convinced himself of a version of events which was inconsistent with the contemporaneous record,” Judge Popplewell said in a written ruling.

San Antonio-based Primera Energy has filed for chapter 11 protection amid a lawsuit filed by unhappy investors in state district court, the San Antonio Business Journal reported yesterday. Court filings show that the oil exploration and production company owes $1 million to $10 million to 1,000 to 5,000 creditors. The bankruptcy filing came one day after Primera's CEO Brian Alfaro lost a legal battle in Bexar County's 288th State District Court, where at least 20 people filed a lawsuit alleging fraud and deceptive trade practices. Judge Antonia Arteaga issued an order last Wednesday putting Primera Energy into a receivership, in which a neutral third-party lawyer would oversee the company and its activities. Investors claimed in the lawsuit that Alfaro fraudulently raised $40 million for unprofitable oil well projects in McMullen and Gonzales counties and that Alfaro maintained a "lavish lifestyle" by skimming 10 percent of their money for himself. The investors allege in the filing that Alfaro put 60 percent of their money in his general accounts for Primera Energy, Alfaro Oil & Gas and Alfaro Energy while the remaining 30 percent actually went to the well projects.