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Nearly 90 percent of California wildfire victims who voted on PG&E Corp.’s plan to pay them and restructure its finances have accepted the proposal, but the company’s problems are far from over, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. PG&E must now steer its $57.65 billion restructuring plan through a pivotal month-long period that will determine whether its blueprint to exit bankruptcy succeeds — and how fire victims are ultimately paid. PG&E needs to get its plan to exit bankruptcy approved in court and by state regulators by June 30 to access a $21 billion fund to pay claims from victims of future major wildfires. In the coming days, the company is expected to face two major steps toward that goal: Regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission will weigh whether to approve the plan, and a confirmation trial should start in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. “It’s all coming together,” said Jared Ellias, a UC Hastings law professor who has been following the case. But the outcome is not guaranteed. Attorneys for various creditors have filed many objections to the company’s bankruptcy plan, and some important elements of the case remain unresolved. Also, if PG&E fails to meet the June deadline, it could be forced to put itself up for sale, according to the terms of a deal the company previously reached with Gov. Gavin Newsom. And some wildfire victims who object to the way PG&E intends to pay them still want changes to the deal, while other critics of the company have said its bankruptcy plan falls far short. As it races to wrap up the case, PG&E also faces the looming specter of the 2020 wildfire season, which could prove highly dangerous because of the relatively meager amounts of rain and snow that fell this winter. The company desperately needs to avoid causing more catastrophic wildfires like the ones it started in 2015, 2017 and 2018, all of which prompted it to file for bankruptcy protection last year.

California power regulators unexpectedly delayed a key vote yesterday on Pacific Gas and Electric’s plan for getting out of bankruptcy after saying one of the utility’s most outspoken critics sent an improper email attacking the company’s proposal to pay wildfire victims, the Associated Press reported. California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer was irked by the need to postpone the vote because of the email sent Tuesday by Will Abrams, a survivor of a 2017 wildfire that tore through his Santa Rosa hometown. The communication came during a mandated quiet period from May 15 through Thursday involving the vote on PG&E’s $58 billion plan for ending its nearly year-and-a-half-old bankruptcy. The vote was delayed until May 28, which coincides with a federal bankruptcy court trial on the plan. State power regulators and a U.S. bankruptcy judge must approve PG&E’s plans by June 30 for the company to qualify for coverage from California’s wildfire insurance fund. PG&E should still be able to meet that deadline. In the email, Abrams reiterated objections to PG&E’s plan filed with the bankruptcy court by a committee that represents wildfire victims about their growing doubts the utility will be able to pay $13.5 billion it has pledged to a fund for the fire victims. Batjer delayed the vote so PG&E and other parties could respond to Abrams’ email. Another quiet period will start Friday and continue through May 28. Batjer warned of “serious consequences,” including potential fines, for any other violations.

Frontier Communications Corp. is taking fire from creditors over a proposed pay package for investment bank Evercore Group LLC that critics said could add up to $129 million, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The telecommunications company disclosed the fee details in filings before the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., where Frontier is pushing to strip equity from public shareholders and turn unsecured bondholders into owners while wiping out $10 billion in debt. Frontier needs permission to pay Evercore from April 14, the date of the bankruptcy filing, onward. Before filing for bankruptcy, the company already paid $29 million for Evercore’s work over the prior year. Add in the services during bankruptcy, and Evercore would collect at least $63 million and perhaps as much as $129 million, according to unsecured creditors that are unhappy with the arrangement. The official unsecured creditors' committee said that Evercore’s fees should be subject to a cap set by Frontier, and are way above market. For example, Lazard Ltd.’s fees on the PG&E Corp. bankruptcy are capped at $35 million and Moelis & Co.’s fees for advising iHeartMedia Inc. on its bankruptcy were capped at $67.5 million, according to the committee’s objection.

Model and social-media influencer Kendall Jenner has agreed to pay $90,000 to settle a lawsuit over an Instagram post promoting Fyre Festival, the 2017 music event whose collapse went viral online, spawned two documentaries and resulted in prison for the organizer, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The since-deleted Instagram post was the subject of a 2019 lawsuit brought by a bankruptcy trustee who is recovering money for Fyre Festival creditors who lost money in the event. Artists including Migos, Pusha T, Blink-182 and Lil Yachty who were booked but never performed at the event were also sued to recover money paid by festival organizer William “Billy” McFarland. Terms of the settlement were described in papers filed Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Jenner, who has 129 million Instagram followers, was allegedly paid $250,000 for the Instagram post promoting the event and was paid an additional $25,000 days later by McFarland’s Fyre Media Inc., according to the lawsuit brought by bankruptcy trustee Gregory Messer. The settlement was reached after Jenner and the trustee agreed to mediation late last year.

PG&E Corp. said that it survived attempts to rally wildfire victims against a $13.5 billion settlement offer, positioning the bankrupt utility favorably to exit chapter 11 on its preferred terms, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Opponents of PG&E’s bankruptcy exit strategy had spent weeks laying out their concerns, with a particular focus on personal-injury lawyer Mikal Watts, whose firm counts 16,000 fire victims as clients and who was at the bargaining table when PG&E negotiated its proposed settlement. Other wildfire victims accused Watts of harboring a conflict of interest after he received a $100 million loan in which PG&E investors Centerbridge Partners LP and Apollo Global Management Inc. held stakes. The judge presiding over PG&E’s bankruptcy said that he wouldn’t disqualify the votes of Watts’s clients, rebuffing a challenge that could have held up PG&E’s progress in getting out of bankruptcy. PG&E said yesterday that the preliminary voting results “indicate overwhelming acceptance” of the settlement proposal by wildfire victims, with the final, certified results expected later this week. The company is scheduled to return to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco beginning May 27 to seek confirmation of a chapter 11 plan, which clears up an estimated $30 billion worth of liabilities from past wildfires linked to the company’s equipment.

Attorneys have agreed on a November deadline for victims of child sex abuse to file claims in the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case, the Associated Press reported. The Nov. 16 date presented to a judge yesterday was worked out after attorneys for the official committee representing abuse victims objected to a proposed Oct. 6 deadline and argued that victims should have at least until Dec. 31. "At a time when millions of Americans are unemployed and preoccupied with basic survival, sexual abuse survivors need and are entitled to a reasonable period of time after they receive notice from the bankruptcy Court to reflect seriously and make a decision whether to file a claim in this case," attorneys for the victims committee wrote in a court filing. After filing for bankruptcy, the Boy Scouts initially proposed a deadline of 80 days after notice of the claims process was published, drawing immediate opposition from attorneys for abuse victims. The Boy Scouts later proposed the October deadline. They argued that it allowed more time than in many Catholic diocese bankruptcy cases, and that it provided sufficient time to conduct a nationwide program of print, television, radio and online notices and allow claimants to submit claim forms.

The judge overseeing PG&E Corp.’s bankruptcy rejected an effort by dissident fire victims to upend voting on the California utility’s reorganization plan, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali said that during a hearing on Friday that he planned to deny a motions asking to throw out votes on the company’s chapter 11 plan cast by families and businesses who lost homes, property and loved ones in the blazes. Some fire victims who want to change the payout deal claimed a lawyer representing the largest group of fire victims has a potential conflict of interest that has tainted the six-week voting process, scheduled to end Friday. The judge will consider the results of the creditor votes when deciding whether to approve PG&E’s plan to reorganize, which includes a $13.5 billion payment to about 80,000 residents and businesses harmed by Northern California wildfires. Lawyers representing thousands of people who have claims against PG&E have been lobbying their clients to vote in favor of the reorganization proposal. A dissident group of victims, including a former member of the official fire victim’s committee that helped negotiate the $13.5 billion deal, asked the judge to throw out thousands of votes cast by clients of Watts, alleging he has a possible conflict because his law firm received a loan that was backed in part by two major PG&E investors.

France-based Imerys SA is offering to sell a bankrupt North American unit that was historically a major supplier of talc to Johnson & Johnson in an effort to escape litigation linking its products to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Only a few product-liability lawsuits had been filed against the U.S. business in 2011 when it was acquired by Imerys, but by the time the unit filed for bankruptcy last year, Imerys Talc America Inc. was swamped by roughly 13,800 claims tied to ovarian cancer and 850 related to mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer. Imerys Talc America had supplied talc to Johnson & Johnson, the prime target of this litigation. Johnson & Johnson has said that its products are safe and not contaminated, and has offered to defend Imerys Talc America in the lawsuits where both companies are named as defendants. Court documents don’t put a dollar figure on Imerys’s potential liabilities or on the combined value of the assets to be assigned to the bankruptcy trust for Imerys Talc America.