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For almost nine months, the musicians of the San Antonio Symphony were on strike, resisting steep cuts proposed by management that they said would destroy the ensemble. As the dispute dragged on, much of the 2021-22 season was canceled, the players found part-time jobs and mediators tried to negotiate a compromise to save the 83-year-old orchestra. The impasse came to an end on Thursday with the announcement that the symphony had decided to file for bankruptcy and dissolve, the New York Times reported. The symphony’s board, which had argued that maintaining a large orchestra had grown too costly, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, said that it did not see a path forward. “With deep regret,” the board said in a statement, “the board of directors of the Symphony Society of San Antonio announces the dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony.” The board said the musicians’ demands to preserve jobs and pay would require “agreeing to a budget that is millions of dollars in excess of what the symphony can afford.” The decision will make San Antonio, with a population of 1.5 million, the largest American city without a major orchestra. Many of the orchestra’s players were caught off guard by the announcement and said they were disheartened that a compromise could not be reached. Since the strike began in late September, some have been working as substitutes in other orchestras, including in Boston, New York, Dallas and Nashville.

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Friday announced that her office secured up to $58.5 million from one of the largest drug manufacturers of opioids in the country, Mallinckrodt plc (Mallinckrodt), for its role in fueling the opioid crisis, according to a press release. Mallinckrodt used deceptive and misleading marketing tactics to encourage use of its highly addictive opioids that harmed communities across the country. Mallinckrodt entered into bankruptcy proceedings shortly after Attorney General James filed a lawsuit against the company in March 2019. Today’s agreement resolves those claims and raises the total amount secured by Attorney General James from opioid manufacturers and distributors to more than $1.5 billion to combat the opioid crisis. This is the second agreement that Attorney General James has reached with Mallinckrodt related to harm it caused New Yorkers. Earlier, Attorney General James announced that Mallinckrodt would pay $26.8 million for Medicaid fraud.

Revlon Inc. filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy as the global supply chain crunch proved the tipping point for the debt-laden company that has struggled to tap into a broader cosmetics sales boom driven by social-media influencers, Bloomberg News reported. The bankruptcy caps a tumultuous period for the cosmetics giant, owned by billionaire Ron Perelman’s MacAndrews & Forbes, which suffered during the pandemic after years of declining sales and endured financial controversies that the company said Thursday could “impede” its restructuring process. At issue is a disputed asset transfer largely in 2020, which saw Revlon stave off default by cutting a deal with lenders that moved collateral out of other creditors’ reach. The financing maneuver angered those who missed out and sparked years of litigation. It also inadvertently embroiled Citigroup Inc. after the bank helped arrange the deal, and later mistakenly paid some creditors nearly $900 million while intending to process a routine interest payment. That marked one of the industry’s most legendary snafus — leading to ongoing litigation over ownership of the $500 million not returned by recipients. The company said in court filings Thursday that the resulting “uncertainty” over who holds a slew of term loans “is likely to impede” the chapter 11 process.

A judge in Texas overseeing Brazos Electric Power Cooperative Inc.'s bankruptcy rejected a request by one of its creditors to arbitrate a contract dispute worth up to $770 million, saying that the proposed arbitration could derail the power cooperative's restructuring and harm consumers in rural Texas at a time when energy prices are already high, Reuters reported. At a Wednesday court hearing in Houston, attorneys for creditor Sandy Creek Energy Associates LP pushed for Brazos, the largest power cooperative in Texas, to arbitrate a contract dispute outside of bankruptcy court. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones sided with Brazos, saying that Sandy Creek's proposal could "drastically change the landscape" of the bankruptcy and ultimately harm other creditors, including rural power customers. "I do not buy the explanation at all that it's going to be quicker," Jones said. Brazos filed for bankruptcy after a historic winter storm in 2021 left millions of Texans without power and triggered a $2 billion fight between Brazos and the state’s electric grid operator. The deadly storm caused energy prices to spike several thousand percent and has caused several other energy companies to file for bankruptcy. Brazos is attempting to mediate its dispute with the Texas power grid operator before proposing a restructuring plan in court.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge said yesterday that he may allow some lawsuits that accuse Johnson & Johnson talc products of causing cancer to proceed while the company's subsidiary seeks a national settlement of the claims in bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan in Trenton, N.J., said that he would consider "two very different paths forward" for the bankruptcy at a July 6 hearing. The company wants the bankruptcy court to estimate the number and value of talc claims, while plaintiffs in the talc lawsuits have asked the court to allow some cases to resume outside of the bankruptcy court. J&J, which maintains that its Baby Powder and other talc products are safe, assigned its talc liabilities to a new subsidiary, LTL Management LLC, and placed it in bankruptcy in October, pausing 38,000 lawsuits that had been filed against J&J. The talc claimants have appealed Kaplan's decision to allow the bankruptcy case to block their lawsuits, and the two sides remain far apart in recent mediation. LTL attorney Greg Gordon of Jones Day said the bankruptcy court should estimate the overall value of talc claims to impose "discipline" on settlement talks. David Molton of Brown Rudnick, an attorney for the talc claimants , said that LTL's approach would cause the case to "malinger" and "fester," just like other bankruptcies involving asbestos claims. At least 300 cancer victims with claims against J&J have died since the LTL case was filed, Molton said.

Mallinckrodt plc on Monday announced that it expects to complete its reorganization process, emerge from chapter 11 and complete the Irish Examinership proceedings in the coming days, according to a press release. On the effective date of emergence, all of Mallinckrodt's existing ordinary shares will be canceled pursuant to the company's reorganization plan and the Irish scheme of arrangement. Mallinckrodt expects to issue at emergence 13,170,932 new ordinary shares to its guaranteed unsecured noteholders in accordance with the provisions of the plan and the scheme. In accordance with the plan, Mallinckrodt also expects to issue at emergence to the opioid claimants 3,290,675 warrants, with a strike price of $103.40, and to adopt at emergence a management incentive plan providing for the issuance to management, key employees and directors of the company of equity awards with respect to up to an aggregate of 1,829,068 shares. Mallinckrodt's new shares are anticipated to trade over-the-counter until such time as the Company relists on a national securities exchange.

A federal bankruptcy court judge again has extended the deadline for the Diocese of Norwich to submit a bankruptcy plan, so creditors, including 140 people who say they were sexually assaulted by priests, can meet with a mediator and resolve a number of contentious issues, The Day reported. Judge James Tancredi on Monday ordered that the Roman Catholic diocese's exclusive filing period for the plan be extended until Sept. 30. It was the fourth extension for the diocese. In April, Tancredi had extended the deadline to June 15, again to give the parties more time to negotiate an agreement. The diocese filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy 11 months ago as it faced more than 60 lawsuits filed by men who say they were sexually assaulted as boys by Christian Brothers and other staff at the diocese-run Mount Saint John Academy, a school for troubled boys in Deep River, from 1990 to 2002. Since then 80 additional people, whose sexual assault allegations involved not only the school but diocesan churches, have filed claims in the bankruptcy case. In addition, various other creditors are seeking a portion of the diocese's assets.

Argentine energy company YPF SA and a trust for its former subsidiary Maxus Energy Corp. on Monday resumed their longstanding dispute over who should pay as much as $14 billion to clean up the contaminated Passaic River in New Jersey, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Lawyers representing both parties argued before Judge Christopher Sontchi of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., over whether parent company YPF can be shielded from the multibillion-dollar liability by putting its subsidiary in bankruptcy. YPF placed Maxus in bankruptcy in 2016, leaving it with the liability related to the contamination of the river. In 2018, the trust in charge of Maxus’s liquidation sued YPF for stripping away most of Maxus’s international assets. In 2019, the lawsuit was allowed to move forward by Judge Sontchi, who presided over Maxus’s 2016 bankruptcy case, after YPF asked for the case to be dismissed. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said that 100 or so other companies might share responsibility for polluting the Passaic with byproducts from the manufacture of paints, pesticides and other chemical products. On Monday, the trust in charge of liquidating the assets of Maxus argued that YPF had stripped valuable assets from the oil-and-gas subsidiary, leaving it with the gigantic bill to clean up the river.

States opposed to a proposed $3 million bonus for the CEO of bankrupt Purdue Pharma L.P. should “move on” and support a proposal to donate the funds to a nonprofit that helps opioid victims, unsecured creditors say, Bloomberg Law reported. The unsecured creditors' committee said in a filing yesterday that it’s “not pleased” that CEO Craig Landau remains in his position, nor does it support paying him the proposed bonus, as the opioid-maker wants. But the New York bankruptcy court has, in previous years, approved similar proposals by Purdue , the committee noted. And the current proposal allows parties to try to claw back payments made to Landau if it’s found that he knowingly participated in any criminal misconduct in connection to Purdue or other activities, it said. “While not a perfect solution, this provision balances the debtors’ desire to compensate their employees with concerns regarding such employees’ potential responsibility for the debtors’ role in the opioid crisis,” the committee said. No party has shown that Landau engaged in conduct that warrants disgorgement of the money, the committee said. Instead, it suggested the states join its request for Landau or Purdue to donate some or all of the bonus to a nonprofit that fights the opioid crisis.