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Apple Inc. was accused in a lawsuit of embarking on an aggressive campaign to poach employees from a lithium-ion battery maker amid reports that it’s developing an electric car, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The lawsuit, filed this month in Massachusetts state court by A123 Systems LLC, also accuses five of its former employees of violating non-disclosure agreements as they either went to work for Apple or planned to. The case was moved to federal court in Boston this week. A123 rose to prominence in 2007 when then-General Motors Corp. worked with it to develop battery technology as the automaker prepared what would become the Chevrolet Volt, an electric-plug-in hybrid car. GM ultimately picked South Korea-based LG Chem Ltd. as the winner of the first battery contract for the Volt in 2009. Wanxiang Group Corp. won approval from the U.S. government to acquire A123 out of bankruptcy reorganization in 2013.

Quicksilver Resources skipped a $13.6 million interest payment to creditors, triggering a 30-day grace period that could end with the Fort Worth-based company filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Dallas Business Journal reported yesterday. Quicksilver makes no guarantee that it will be successful in restructuring its debt in a timely manner or at all. The company also made it clear that it will seek voluntary protection under chapter 11 to restructure its capital structure. This comes one week after Quicksilver announced plans to cut its workforce by 10 percent and one month after the company was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

Lawyers examining the collapse of Oscar-winning special effects studio Rhythm & Hues Inc. are blaming its former leaders for focusing on "notoriously low-margin projects" and spending the California firm's money on a startup investment that had nothing to do with winning business from Hollywood, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In a lawsuit, lawyers who are trying to repay Rhythm & Hues' old debts said that former leaders made decisions that cost the firm $70 million before it filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Those leaders continued to focus on winning special effects and computer generation bids from only three film studios — Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Studios — even though that work was tough to profit from, said the lawsuit filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles.

Billionaire Eddie Lampert’s quest to revive Sears Holdings Corp. is looking dubious to credit-swaps traders, Bloomberg News reported today. It now costs more to insure against a Sears default for a year than for five years, a dynamic that indicates traders anticipate a credit event such as a default in the near term. The relationship was reversed as recently as last month, according to prices compiled by CMA in the privately negotiated market for credit swaps. The 129-year-old company, which has lost $7 billion over the past four years, is trying to avoid the fate of RadioShack Corp., another once-iconic retailer that filed for bankruptcy protection this month. Sears has divested assets and received cash infusions from Lampert, one of its largest shareholders. In November, the Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based company said it was considering the sale and leaseback of as many as 300 stores as part of its turnaround effort.

Revel AC Inc. urged a judge to let it scrap the second attempted sale of its bankrupt Atlantic City, N.J., casino and try for a third time to find a buyer, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The current proposed buyer, Florida real estate investor Glenn Straub’s Polo North Country Club Inc., has no intention of going through with the deal and Revel needs to find another suitor, the casino’s lawyers told Bankruptcy Judge Gloria Burns. Revel, which opened in April 2012 at a cost of $2.4 billion, filed for bankruptcy in June and closed in September as Atlantic City lost business to competitors in neighboring states. Brookfield Property Partners LP, which won a bankruptcy auction for the assets with a $110 million offer last year, walked away, leaving Polo North as the only suitor. Revel has argued it should be allowed to cancel the $95.4 million deal with Straub after a Feb. 9 deadline lapsed without a closing. Revel is also seeking to keep Polo North’s $10 million deposit. Polo North has said that it couldn’t go through with the sale before learning whether existing tenants would be allowed to stay. Judge Burns said that she will rule by Thursday after reviewing court documents and considering arguments raised at the hearing.

Enterprise software provider Allen Systems Group, Inc. filed for chapter 11 protection today to implement a balance sheet restructuring agreed to by most of its top-ranking lenders, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Supporters of the company's plan to cut its debt by $420 million include Franklin Square Capital Partners , GSO Capital Partners LP , KKR Credit Advisors (US) LLC, Cetus Capital II, LLC and Ellis Lake Capital, LLC, the company said. The bankruptcy filing followed a series of missed interest payments in 2014 by the company, which owes $327 million on senior loans, and $340 million on bond debt.

Saladworks LLC, which calls itself the largest U.S. franchised fresh salad chain, filed for bankruptcy yesterday to fend off litigation by Commerce Bancorp Inc. founder Vernon Hill II, its minority shareholder, Reuters reported yesterday. Hill's litigation has made it impossible for Saladworks to find a buyer, restructure or sell additional franchises, the Conshohocken, Pa.-based company said in a bankruptcy court filing. Saladworks said that it hired the investment bank SSG Advisors LLC to look for a buyer, and that an entity controlled by Hill is its largest unsecured creditor. Created in 1986, Saladworks said it has more than 100 locations, and that all will remain open.

RadioShack Corp.’s unsecured creditors say that the retailer should have left a suicide note instead of a trail of unanswered questions about opportunities missed to save the business, the Wall Street Journal reported today. With more than 1,700 stores already being liquidated, the rest of the iconic retailer is headed toward the bankruptcy auction block. It’s a process that unsecured creditors say might have worked last year as part of a measured turnaround effort. Instead, they say, hedge funds engineered a bankruptcy crash landing designed to favor RadioShack’s top-ranking lenders, including the big shareholder that is poised to buy some of the company at a fast auction, Standard General LP.