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Dozens of sex-abuse victims asked a bankruptcy judge on Monday to strike down the Boy Scouts of America’s reorganization plan, saying that the proposal deprives them of rights to collect insurance payments in the millions of dollars, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The victims, many of whom suffered at the hands of a single priest on the island of Guam, and the Archdiocese of Agana, which sponsored Boy Scouts activities on the island, are among the remaining parties still opposing the approval of the youth group’s $2.7 billion settlement. A trial held during the past four weeks over the Boy Scouts reorganization plan before Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein is expected to wrap up this week. If approved, the Boy Scouts’ plan would grant the archdiocese, as well as insurers Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and Chubb Ltd.’s Century Indemnity Co., immunity from litigation over the abuses, without making additional payments to or obtaining consent from the Guam victims, according to a court filing by lawyers of the victims. Hartford and Century, combined, have agreed to contribute more than $1.6 billion of the funds toward the settlement with all Boy Scouts plaintiffs. The Guam archdiocese filed its own bankruptcy in 2019 over abuse claims related to Boy Scouts and church activities and is working on its own reorganization plan. While the Guam victims can still go after insurance policies covering the Archdiocese of Agana, the Boy Scouts plan would prevent them from pursuing those policies covering the archdiocese for abuses tied to scouting activities, they have argued in court papers.

Another Texas power company has filed for bankruptcy protection in the wake of last year's historic winter storm that knocked out power for millions and caused energy prices to skyrocket, Reuters reported. Ector County Energy Center LLC, which filed for chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware on Monday, was one of many power generators in the state unable to produce power during the storm. Facing extensive litigation, including a $400 million lawsuit brought by one of its customers, Direct Energy Business Marketing LLC, the company is looking sell its assets through bankruptcy. The company, which reported revenues of about $23 million in 2021, operates a 330 megawatt natural gas-fired plant located outside of Odessa, Texas. It has lined up a lead bid of $91.25 million from an affiliate of Rockland Capital. At the time of the storm, Ector had an agreement under which Direct Energy paid a monthly premium in exchange for the right to call on Ector to provide energy and various ancillary services, according to court papers. Ector was unable to deliver power or services during the storm, prompting Direct Energy to sue in New York state court in June 2021 for $400 million in damages. It has also been hit with more than 100 other lawsuits stemming from the storm. The company, which is an indirect unit of Invenergy Clean Power LLC, also saw its cash flow decline after the storm as it shifted from pre-set pricing models to operating largely in real-time energy markets, according to court papers. In addition to its legal troubles, Ector owes $337.3 million on a first lien loan. It had about $5.4 million in cash on hand as of April 1, 2022.

Jeff Smith, a partner with the influential consulting firm McKinsey & Company, accepted a highly sensitive assignment in December 2017. The opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma, beleaguered and in financial trouble, wanted to revamp its business, and an executive there sought out Dr. Smith. Over the following weeks, he traveled to Purdue’s offices in Stamford, Conn., meeting and dining with executives. His team reviewed business plans and evaluated new drugs that Purdue hoped would help move the company beyond the turmoil associated with OxyContin, its addictive painkiller that medical experts say helped to spark the opioid epidemic. But the corporate reorganization was not Dr. Smith’s only assignment at the time. He was also helping the Food and Drug Administration overhaul its office that approves new drugs — the same office that would determine the regulatory fate of Purdue’s new line of proposed products. The story of Dr. Smith’s simultaneous work for Purdue and its federal regulator is told through previously undisclosed internal McKinsey records that more broadly call into question the consulting firm’s firewall between its work for private companies and for the authorities that oversee them. A review by The New York Times of thousands of internal McKinsey documents found that the firm repeatedly allowed employees who served pharmaceutical companies, including opioid makers, to also consult for the F.D.A., the drug industry’s primary government regulator. And, the documents show, McKinsey touted that inside access in pitches to private clients. In an email in 2014 to Purdue’s chief executive, a McKinsey consultant highlighted the firm’s work for the F.D.A. and stressed “who we know and what we know.” The documents reviewed by The Times were obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which on Wednesday released initial results from its investigation into McKinsey’s work with the federal government, and by a coalition of state attorneys general as part of a 2021 settlement resolving an investigation into the firm’s work with Purdue. The records detail the firm’s work for Purdue and other opioid manufacturers over a 15-year period, from 2004 to 2019.

Exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui is offering to repay the more than $100 million he owes creditors in part by offering up the yacht that drove him to bankruptcy, court papers show, Bloomberg News reported. The businessman’s debt stems from a $30 million loan he got from a fund in 2008, which according to the lender Guo failed to repay. Guo arranged for the yacht to leave U.S. waters sometime after October 2020, putting it out of the reach of debt collectors. That prompted a New York judge to hold the Chinese exile in contempt and levy a fine of $134 million, leading Guo to file for bankruptcy in February just before that payment was due.

PG&E Corp. agreed to pay $55 million to avoid criminal prosecutions for two big wildfires including the second-biggest in California history, Bloomberg News reported. Under a settlement with district attorneys representing six counties in the area, no criminal charges will be filed from last year’s near-record large Dixie Fire, and a criminal complaint stemming from the 2019 Kincade Fire will be dismissed, the company said Monday in a statement. The utility is still fighting charges in Shasta County, including involuntary manslaughter, over yet another wildfire in 2020 that killed four people. Preventing wildfires and resolving civil and criminal liability from the blazes has weighed heavily on PG&E for years. Fires sparked by power lines and transformers that have destroyed more than a million acres and killed scores of people sent the company into bankruptcy in 2019. PG&E recently completed a five-year period of criminal probation under a federal judge in San Francisco who frequently lambasted the company’s performance on fire safety. PG&E pleaded guilty in 2020 to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the deadliest fire in state history in 2018.

LATAM Airlines Group SA has accused a Chilean bank representing a group of unsecured bondholders of spreading inaccurate information about the airline's proposed restructuring ahead of a key vote on the plan, Reuters reported. Attorneys for the airline will appear before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Garrity in Manhattan on April 15 to force Banco del Estado de Chile, known as BancoEstado, to turn over information about what LATAM described as an attempt to “obstruct and taint” its ability to reorganize in chapter 11 by seeking rulings from a Chilean court that would interfere with the New York proceeding and swaying creditor votes on the deal. Holders of nearly $500 million in unsecured bonds, for whom BancoEstado serves as trustee, have long opposed the plan, which they say gives them only 19.3% in recoveries, or up to 27.8% if they invest new money. During a hearing before Judge Garrity on Thursday, a lawyer for BancoEstado, Pedro Jimenez of Paul Hastings, called LATAM’s demand for additional information a stunt, saying the airline could have simply asked for the documents. LATAM, one of the leading airlines in South America, was one of three large Latin American carriers that filed for bankruptcy in New York in the spring of 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic brought global travel to a halt. The other two, Grupo Aeromexico and Avianca, have since emerged from bankruptcy, while LATAM is working to do the same in the coming months.

The judge overseeing the bankruptcy case of Sears Holdings Corp. appointed mediators to help resolve a $2 billion lawsuit against former chairman Eddie Lampert and other former shareholders filed by the retailer’s creditors three years ago, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Robert Drain appointed Shelley Chapman, a fellow bankruptcy judge in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, along with James Peck and Jed Melnick, as mediators in the lawsuit, which alleges that Mr. Lampert and his hedge fund stripped key assets like Lands’ End and the Sears Hometown stores out of the company before its chapter 11 filing. Mr. Lampert has denied the allegations and sought to have the lawsuit dismissed. A settlement or monetary award in the litigation is expected to be a key source of recovery for top-ranking creditors of the former Sears, many of them foreign vendors, which are still owed roughly $60 million, according to a January court filing. Judge Drain set a May 23 deadline for the mediation to conclude, though it can be extended, according to Wednesday’s court order. The appointment of mediators comes just over two months before Judge Drain’s scheduled retirement from the bench.

A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the Boy Scouts of America didn’t infringe on the Girl Scouts of the USA’s trademarks, saying the girls-only group failed to show any confusion from the Boy Scouts’ efforts to recruit girls into coed programming, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Alvin Hellerstein with the U.S. District Court of New York dismissed the Girl Scouts’ lawsuit alleging the Boy Scouts had damaged the Girl Scouts trademark rights and confused the public by using gender-neutral phrases like “Scout Me In.” Judge Hellerstein said in his ruling the Girl Scouts’ complaint “is based, not on concern for trademark confusion, but on fear for their competitive position in a market with gender neutral options for scouting.” “Though Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts may now compete more than they once did, neither organization can pre-empt the other’s use of the Scout terms and their trademarks are not likely to be confused,” the judge said. The Girl Scouts said yesterday that it was disappointed by the judge’s ruling and that it planned to file an appeal. “This case is about ensuring that parents are not misled into thinking that Girl Scouts are part of or the same as the Boy Scouts,” the group said in a statement.

Following a three-week trial, a Delaware judge began hearing closing arguments Wednesday in the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case, the Associated Press reported. Judge Laura Selber Silverstein must decide whether to approve a reorganization plan the BSA negotiated over the past two years. It would compensate tens of thousands of men who say they were sexually abused as children in Scouting, while allowing the Boy Scouts to continue as an ongoing enterprise. The Boy Scouts, based in Irving, Texas, petitioned for bankruptcy protection in February 2020 in an effort to halt hundreds of individual lawsuits and create a settlement trust for abuse victims. Although the organization faced 275 lawsuits at the time, more than 82,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in the bankruptcy case. The reorganization plan calls for the Boys Scouts, its 250 local councils, and certain insurance companies and troop sponsoring organizations to contribute some $2.6 billion in cash and property into a compensation fund for abuse victims.