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The National Rifle Association has agreed to allow the New York Attorney General’s office question a board member about the gun rights organization’s decision to seek chapter 11 protection, Reuters reported. NRA attorney Gregory Garman of Garman Turner Gordon told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin Hale during a remote hearing yesterday that the organization has agreed to set a date for a deposition of Judge Phillip Journey, an NRA board member who is a Kansas state judge. The agreement came two weeks before a trial over the attorney general’s motion to dismiss the chapter 11 case is scheduled to begin.

Upstart Texas power retailer Griddy Energy LLC, devoid of customers and facing litigation after charging hefty amounts during the winter freeze that swept the state last month, is planning to file for bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Griddy is preparing to wind down its business through a bankruptcy filing that could come within days. Texas regulators have already barred Griddy from the state power market after the company passed steep increases in electricity prices on to customers during last month’s energy crisis. While most consumers in Texas buy electricity at fixed rates from municipal utilities and power retailers, Griddy offered access to variable electricity prices that skyrocketed during the extreme winter weather. When spot prices briefly shot up to $9,000 per megawatt hour during the winter freeze, compared with an average last year of less than $22, Griddy customers complained of receiving exorbitant bills, part of a broader backlash over how regulators and market participants handled the weather emergency.

The trustee overseeing Ruby’s Diner Inc.’s chapter 7 proceedings is suing the chain’s co-founders and former officers in Santa Ana, alleging the pair drove the restaurant group into bankruptcy after improperly taking the company’s assets and seeking at least $35 million in damages, MyNewsLA.com reported. The complaint, filed on Thursday in federal bankruptcy court by trustee Richard Marshack, alleges the chain’s insolvency was caused by Douglas Cavanaugh and Ralph Kosmides due to a series of improper decisions. According to the suit, RDI owned and operated the Ruby’s Diner restaurant chain, which Cavanaugh and Kosmides started in Newport Beach in 1982 and grew to include over 40 locations. The company declared bankruptcy in 2018 when it owed over $14 million to its creditors, the suit says. The lawsuit alleges RDI’s insolvency was due to a series of decisions by which Cavanaugh and Kosmides improperly enriched themselves at the expense of the company. Marshack claims that the co-founders used Ruby’s name, expertise, funds and personnel to obtain a lucrative opportunity from the state of California to develop two highly successful restaurants in Crystal Cove State Park: The Beachcomber and The Shake Shack.

The trust distributing payments to PG&E Corp. wildfire victims is set to release another multimillion-dollar round of funds. The Fire Victim Trust said Friday that it will make begin making payments on Monday representing a 30% share of each verified claim, the Sacramento Bee reported. So far, however, only a small fraction of the claims filed by more than 71,000 homeowners and businesses have been verified, and trust Administrator Cathy Yanni said about $30 million will go out the door Monday. The deadline for filing claims was in late February. But the volume of claim verifications will grow substantially, and this round of payouts will be “certainly in the hundreds of millions,” Yanni said. The payments will likely take months, she said. These 30% payments are different than a series of preliminary payments the trust began making last November. Those payments, capped at $25,000 apiece, total $80 million so far, Yanni said. Ultimately, the trust has been set up to disburse $13.5 billion that PG&E agreed to pay, mainly to victims of the 2017 wine country fires and the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed most of Paradise. Victims of the 2015 Butte Fire also are eligible.

People looking to file a claim seeking damages for clergy sex abuse against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse must do so by midnight on April 15, Syracuse.com reported. The diocese issued a reminder of that deadline, known as the “bar date,” in a news release Sunday. The deadline was initially set in November 2020 by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Margaret Cangilos- Ruiz. The diocese filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Northern District of New York in June 2020. That move immediately shifted all abuse claims from state court to bankruptcy court. At the time, there were more than 100 claims of abuse against the Syracuse diocese. The bankruptcy filing came just days after 38 people filed Child Victims Act lawsuits against the church. Under the judge’s order, those with claims must file them by April 15 or risk losing their rights as potential creditors to vote in the diocese’s financial reorganization and any shares in the settlement made to victims.

Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma LP have offered roughly $4.3 billion to resolve sprawling opioid litigation, up from $3 billion initially proposed in settlement discussions underway in the OxyContin maker’s bankruptcy proceedings, Reuters reported. Sackler family members are now willing to contribute $4.275 billion to help settle about 3,000 lawsuits brought by U.S. communities seeking to hold them and Purdue responsible for damage wrought by the opioid epidemic. Details of a far-reaching settlement could be outlined in a Purdue reorganization plan filed in a U.S. bankruptcy court next week. Purdue filed for bankruptcy in 2019 facing on onslaught of opioid litigation. In November, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company pleaded guilty to three felonies arising from its marketing of prescription opioid painkillers. A previous proposed settlement that Purdue values at more than $10 billion guaranteed $3 billion from the Sacklers over seven years, with additional funds from family members contingent on sales of other international businesses they own. That offer as a practical matter decreased to $2.775 billion after the Sacklers agreed to pay $225 million to settle a Justice Department civil probe. Under terms of the latest proposal, the Sacklers could still use proceeds from sales of those businesses to cover the higher $4.275 billion payout, but would need to make good on it regardless. It is not clear how long the Sacklers would take to pay the proposed higher amount, but it would likely be a period of years.

Roughly 400 people who allege that they were sexually preyed upon by local priests and deacons went to bankruptcy court and sought compensation from the Archdiocese of New Orleans before last week’s deadline for victims of clerical abuse to file such claims, church officials said yesterday, NOLA.com reported. The announcement provides clarity as to the number and potential value of remaining clerical abuse cases that the archdiocese will have to settle or litigate before it can reorganize its finances, a process that started when the church filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy last May. March 1 was the final day a sexual abuse claim could be filed in the case, which is the only avenue for compensation for those claiming they were molested prior to the bankruptcy filing. Whoever had such claims but didn’t pursue compensation by the deadline has forever lost the right to do so. Plaintiffs’ attorney Jeff Anderson, who has represented abuse claimants against virtually all of the 27 U.S. Catholic dioceses that have declared bankruptcy, said he believes 400 claims is relatively low for the church in New Orleans, given that the archdiocese serves about a half-million parishioners and currently has a list of more than 70 clergy who have been credibly accused of sexually molesting children or vulnerable adults. For the sake of comparison, the Diocese of Buffalo filed for bankruptcy last February and the court has given claimants until August of this year to file, eight months more than New Orleans claimants received. The Buffalo diocese, which serves about 700,000 Catholics, estimates it will end up receiving 400 abuse claims, but it’s impossible to know if that will prove anywhere near accurate.

The chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas huddled with Bank of America utility analysts on Tuesday as pressure mounted on him to reverse about $16 billion in emergency power pricing that would hurt power plant operators, Reuters reported. The meeting came two days before PUC Chairman Arthur D’Andrea was due to rule on rescinding billions of dollars in charges levied on electricity marketers. If he reverses those charges, it would help retail marketers and hurt traders and power generators that stand to collect the money. The state’s power grid operator raised power prices sharply during a February freeze to induce more power during a blackout. However, prices were left at about 450 times their usual level long after the emergency passed, moves that benefited traders and generators. Bank of America has market analysis and power and gas trading arms deeply tied to the Texas crisis. Securities analysts on the call with D’Andrea give investors advice in whether to purchase securities in publicly traded utilities that could lose from any repricing.

An independent bankruptcy trustee is taking charge of an unfinished hotel in Coachella, Calif., and will be empowered to probe lender allegations that developers bungled the project envisioned as a luxury destination for attendees of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Sheri Bluebond of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday granted a request by the lender, an investment fund managed by Calmwater Asset Management LLC, to appoint a chapter 11 trustee over project developer Glenroy Coachella LLC, which filed for bankruptcy last month to avoid a foreclosure sale. The ruling comes after the Calmwater fund and another early investor in the project accused real-estate investor Stuart Rubin, the manager and majority owner of Glenroy Coachella, of mismanaging the project and improprieties such as using a false budget that underreported project costs to get a $24.4 million construction loan. Mr. Rubin in court papers filed last week denied the allegations of wrongdoing, including the claim that he used an alternative budget to mislead the lender. Mr. Rubin said he has spent thousands of hours on the hotel project without collecting a development fee or other remuneration. Judge Bluebond said that there are valid concerns over how the hotel project has been handled, including claims that developers have withheld information and records from investors and a court-appointed receiver, which has been overseeing the project since 2019.

Energy retailer Just Energy Group Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and Canada on Tuesday, hit with massive bills from the Texas energy crisis as the financial fallout spreads after last month’s dramatic spike in power prices, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Toronto-based Just Energy said it had received roughly $250 million in bills from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which has issued large invoices to other municipal electric companies, energy cooperatives and power retailers in the aftermath of the Texas blackouts. Just Energy filed for protection in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston on Tuesday with an agreement to borrow $125 million in emergency financing from top investor Pacific Investment Management Co. The company said it wouldn’t be able to pay amounts due to Ercot, the state’s power grid operator, without that loan package, including more than $96 million coming due on Tuesday. The bankruptcy filings “enable Just Energy to continue all operations without interruption throughout the U.S. and Canada and to continue making payments required by Ercot and satisfy other regulatory obligations,” the company said. Just Energy marks the second major bankruptcy among Texas energy players stemming from last month’s electricity crisis after Brazos Electric Power Cooperative Inc., the state’s largest electric-power cooperative, filed for chapter 11 last week.