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Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office has asked a federal judge to reject an attempt by former Edenville Dam owner Lee Mueller to shield himself from a nearly $120 million judgment through bankruptcy protection, MLive.com reported. On Nov. 16, Nessel’s office motioned for dismissal of Mueller’s chapter 13 case in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Nevada, calling the former dam owner’s filing a “bad faith” effort to avoid paying judgments following the 2020 Michigan flooding disaster. Mueller, of Las Vegas, was ordered to pay $119,825,000 in natural resource damages by a federal judge in Michigan, who issued a default judgment against the former Boyce Hydro owner on Nov. 27 after ruling in February he was personally liable for the death of fish and freshwater mussels during the flood. In the state’s motion in Nevada, assistant attorney general Nathan Gambill called Mueller “one of the worst environmental wrongdoers in Michigan history.” “His bankruptcy filings do not reflect it, but Mr. Mueller’s sole purpose in pursuing bankruptcy relief is to discharge court judgments,” Gambill wrote. A spokesperson for Nessel’s office said Michigan seeks to collect on the Nov. 27 judgment “to the fullest extent permitted by law” and use the money for “restorative purposes.”

A lender run by the billionaire Reuben Brothers has filed to seize the Chatwal, a luxury hotel in Midtown Manhattan, after the debt went into default, Bloomberg News reported. The property’s mezzanine debt, which was loaned by the Reuben Brothers’ Motcomb Estates, is scheduled for a Jan. 17 auction, positioning the winning bidder to take control of the 76-room hotel at 130 W 44th St., where weekend rates often top $1,000 a night. The hotel is part of Hyatt Hotels Corp.’s global system, and is linked to an entity called Adams Hotels International in property records. A pre-foreclosure lawsuit filed in May lists Dubai businessman Iyer Vaidyanathan Narayan as a guarantor on the loan. A representative for Hyatt said that the property is expected to be put up for auction in January. The hotel will continue normal operations throughout a potential change in ownership, with service levels remaining intact, the representative said. The Chatwal is not the only New York hotel to grapple with lenders in recent years, as sluggish international tourism and business travel weighed on demand, and higher interest rates ramped up financial pressures. The Times Square Edition and the Margaritaville Resort Times Square Hotel have had similar issues, even as lodging demand has improved significantly from the early days of the pandemic.

The Supreme Court on Monday will consider the Biden administration’s bid to scuttle a $6 billion accord between bankrupt drugmaker Purdue Pharma LP and its billionaire owners, Bloomberg News reported. The deal would protect members of the Sackler family from future opioid lawsuits by way of an oft-used legal mechanism that the high court is now scrutinizing for the first time. If upheld, the settlement would snuff out an inferno of civil lawsuits blaming Purdue’s owners for the company’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin and, in exchange, route billions of dollars to victims, states and communities harmed by the nation’s addiction crisis. The proposal won overwhelming support from opioid crisis victims who voted on it, but there remains a vocal contingent bitterly opposed to letting Purdue’s billionaire owners put the lawsuits behind them. Detractors may get their way because of the challenge from a unit of the Justice Department. At issue is a component of the settlement that forces all opioid victims to give up their claims against the Sacklers even if they’d prefer to take their chances with a jury. Congress authorized similar maneuvers decades ago in bankruptcies related to asbestos lawsuits, and over time, lawyers and bankruptcy courts reasoned that the mandate could be expanded to an array of corporate wrongdoing. Similar deals have ended mass litigation over dangerous products and waves of sex abuse claims against Catholic dioceses, the Boy Scouts of America and USA Gymnastics. They even appear in some mundane acquisitions of bankrupt firms. But federal appeals courts are split over whether the linchpin of these agreements — provisions called nonconsensual third-party releases — are lawful.

Crypto lender Celsius Network may have to seek a new creditor vote on its proposed transformation into a bitcoin-mining business, a U.S. bankruptcy judge said during a court hearing on Thursday, Reuters reported. Celsius said last week that it had reduced its post-bankruptcy business plans to focus only on bitcoin-mining, citing the skepticism of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about its other planned business lines. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn of New York, who is overseeing Celsius' chapter 11 process, expressed frustration on Thursday about the late pivot, saying that he had been a "broken record" about Celsius's need to reach agreement with the SEC. "This is not the deal that the creditors voted on," Glenn said. The revised deal could face "substantial opposition" from creditors, he said. The SEC did not definitively object to Celsius' bankruptcy plan before it was approved, but Celsius said the agency was unwilling to approve crypto lending and staking activity that the agency has opposed in the past.

A Chilean wind farm operator backed by Latin American Power has filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. with a restructuring deal that would provide financial relief from a debt default due to increased competition and severe drought, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Santiago-based Inversiones Latin America Power filed for chapter 11 Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, with more than $400 million of debt. Chief Executive Esteban Moraga said a 2019 move by the Chilean government to phase out coal plants and make the country carbon-neutral by 2050 resulted in a proliferation of new renewable projects, in turn creating a shortage of transmission capacity. Other factors pressuring the company’s finances include volatility in the Chilean energy market due to severe drought conditions, he said in a sworn declaration filed in bankruptcy court. Those conditions have resulted in lower energy-generation at the company’s two wind farms, forcing it to buy energy at significantly higher prices in the spot market to honor customer contracts. That move has hurt cash flow, making the company unable to meet its debt obligations. Earlier this year, Inversiones defaulted on its debt and its credit ratings were lowered, partly due to spot price volatility.

Bankrupt trucking company Yellow is considering an offer to revive the carrier and rehire thousands of its former workers as it weighs competing bids at a court-supervised auction that would disperse its nationwide network of truck terminals to rivals, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sarah Riggs Amico, executive chair of auto-carrier Jack Cooper Transport, is leading a bid that would replace Yellow, which shut down over the summer, with a smaller, leaner trucking company that aims to win back some of the billions of dollars worth of freight business that has shifted to a range of other carriers. The bid faces major hurdles, including persuading the federal government to extend a $700 million loan made to Yellow during the COVID-19 pandemic that is due in 2024. It also comes as Yellow is deep in the process of selling off tens of thousands of trucks and trailers and about 170 North American truck terminals, assets that have been valued at a total of more than $2 billion. Yellow has already begun sending its equipment to liquidators for sale over the coming year, and it has accepted a stalking-horse bid of $1.525 billion from rival trucker Estes Express Lines for its real estate holdings, which are being auctioned this week.

The biggest U.S. convertible bond issue in nearly two years confirmed that the asset class’s comeback is well underway, as companies seeking to lower the cost of their debt are rushing to beat the market’s looming holiday freeze, Bloomberg News reported. PG&E Corp. priced a $1.9 billion offering overnight after upsizing it from the initial $1.5 billion target, confirming a Bloomberg News report. The California utility company’s issue is the biggest in the U.S. since December 2021, according to Bloomberg calculations, when electric car maker Lucid Group Inc. raised $2 billion in convertible debt. The U.S. equity-linked volume seen in the two-year stretch at the beginning of this decade is unlikely to be repeated, with $104 billion raised in 2020 and $89 billion in 2021, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Still, the $51.3 billion total so far this year is nearly 73% higher than 2022’s full-year haul, and is set to grow further as investors warm to the assets once again. PG&E is already leveraging its freshly raised capital to refinance term loans, though it has downsized the proposed issue to $500 million from $750 million. The utility giant recently announced it will pay a dividend for the first time in about six years, as part of efforts to restore its financial health after emerging from bankruptcy.