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Movie theater chain Cineworld Group on Monday announced a bankruptcy settlement with its landlords and lenders, clearing the way for the company to borrow an additional $150 million and make a $1 billion debt repayment, Reuters reported. Landlords and junior creditors dropped their opposition to the billion-dollar debt repayment after Cineworld agreed to pay at least $20 million in rent that will accrue after Sept. 30. Britain's Cineworld, which filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas in September with less than $4 million in cash on hand, previously did not intend to make any post-September rent payments until the end of its bankruptcy. Cineworld, the world's second-largest cinema chain operator, also agreed to explore a potential sale of the business and allow creditor input on its business plan. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur in Houston said that the agreement was a "pretty amazing" result given the widespread landlord and creditor opposition to Cineworld's bankruptcy financing at the start of its chapter 11 case. Creditors had filed 15 objections to the loan in court, and the company resolved about a dozen more objections before they were filed, Cineworld attorney Christopher Marcus said in court.

A failed plan to bring the Carolina Panthers practice facility to Rock Hill could result in York County being awarded over $81 million, WCNC.com reported. Bankruptcy Judge Karen Owens yesterday filed a motion to allow York County to have an $81 million voting stake in the bankruptcy fallout relating to David Tepper's GT Real Estate company. Owens made the decision because she was worried about how the county would receive no relief from the project's fallout. "I'm concerned with the danger of disenfranchisement of the county," Judge Owens said during the court hearing. "It is appropriate for them to have a voice in the vote and at the confirmation proceedings." Without a voting stake, parties that are owed money from the bankruptcy deal could risk not receiving what they are owed. Other contracting parties have already somewhat agreed to receive millions from the bankruptcy deal. However, GT Real Estate's bankruptcy proposals left no funding for York County or the city of Rock Hill. Yesterday's hearing only pertains to York County. The city of Rock Hill will have to wait till at least Nov. 16 to see if a similar voting stake for $20 million will be granted, according to court records.

The first tip arrived last December. In an email to a Justice Department official, an anonymous author called for a probe into the handful of private companies that courts enlist to process paperwork in big bankruptcy cases, Bloomberg News reported. The concern: some of these companies, known as claims agents, were selling data to a new market maker, Xclaim Inc., which facilitates the buying and selling of the debts of bankrupt companies. The deals allowed claims agents to profit from the trades. What followed is a courtroom reckoning that threatens to disrupt the quietly lucrative world of bankruptcy administrators and a niche, multibillion-dollar financial market that depends on them. Several claims agents face judicial sanctions in New York City, one of the nation’s busiest bankruptcy districts. A worst-case scenario could see the companies barred from doing business with those courts entirely, putting millions of fees at risk. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn has ordered each claims agent in his district to explain whether they cut deals with Xclaim and disclose a detailed accounting of the arrangements. He’s also weighing sanctions against Xclaim’s founder and another employee for publicly disclosing the contact information of federal employees during the proceedings.

Bankrupt Texas petrochemical producer TPC Group on Thursday announced a $30 million settlement with junior creditors, including people with injury and property damage claims related to a 2019 fire explosion and fire at a Port Neches, Texas, refinery, Reuters reported. The Houston-based firm filed a pre-packaged chapter 11 case in June after reaching an agreement with bondholders to eliminate $950 million of $1.3 billion in secured debt and shed liabilities from an explosion and fire at its plant in Port Neches, Texas. A bankruptcy plan based on that agreement would have left just $5 million for junior creditors and litigation claimants. Yesterday's settlement increases junior creditors' recovery to $30 million and ensures that a higher percentage of those funds will go to litigation claimants. Bondholders, who will not be fully repaid in TPC's restructuring, agreed not to collect any money from the $30 million fund.

A federal appeals court upheld the chapter 11 restructuring of Windstream Holdings Inc., finding bondholder complaints about the debt-cutting plan moot because reversing it would mean unwinding transactions that have already taken place, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York backed the telecommunications company’s 2020 restructuring, which put Elliott Management Corp. and other senior creditors in control of the business while wiping out junior bondholders owed roughly $2.4 billion. The appeals court found bondholders’ appeal to be equitably moot because they didn’t do enough to prevent the bankruptcy plan from taking effect. Equitable mootness is a judge-made doctrine that protects chapter 11 plans from being unwound if doing so would affect innocent market participants that relied on it. The bondholder trustee, U.S. Bank NA, used its appeal to argue for limiting the doctrine of equitable mootness, saying it contravenes federal courts’ obligation to exercise jurisdiction over disputes stemming from corporate bankruptcy plans. But the trustee “has not suggested any principled rule by which we should limit the doctrine or determine when its application is overbroad,” the Second Circuit said. “U.S. Bank appears instead to invite us to carve out the facts of this case ad hoc. We must decline this invitation.”

The Buffalo Diocese in its settlement Tuesday with the State Attorney General’s Office made no admissions about covering up for priests who had molested children, but agreed to implement enhanced measures to prevent future sex abuse in parishes and schools, the Buffalo News reported. The settlement, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, bans two retired bishops linked to a cover-up of sex abuses from serving in any charitable fiduciary roles in New York, and requires the diocese to follow through for five years on such measures as a program to monitor offending priests. The diocese did not admit to any wrongdoing in the stipulated final order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Ronnie Abrams. The 2020 lawsuit accused diocese leaders of protecting more than two dozen priests accused of child sex abuse by not referring their cases to the Vatican for potential removal from the priesthood. It also accused Bishop Richard J. Malone and Auxiliary Bishop Edward M. Grosz of misusing charitable assets by supporting priests who they knew had likely sexually abused minors. Malone retired in 2019 under intense criticism over his handling of abuse allegations. Grosz retired a few months later in 2020. Bishop Michael W. Fisher, who succeeded Malone, expressed “deep regret” and acknowledged Tuesday that “those who presented themselves as ministers of God” had defiled their vows and “committed crimes against the most vulnerable.” Fisher also said that survivors of clergy sex abuse were not to blame for the abuse. Abuse survivors expressed skepticism about how much the settlement holds diocese officials accountable.

One fallout from the unexpected bankruptcy of a prominent construction contractor in August has been delays on a long in the works West Village neighborhood redevelopment in Detroit, Crain's Detroit Business reported. In a lawsuit filed on Friday in U.S. Eastern District of Michigan Bankruptcy Court, an affiliate of developer Michael Higgins (more on another case in a hot minute) claims a construction lien that the now defunct Bloomfield Hills-based T.H. Marsh Construction Co. filed this summer seeking $267,000 for alleged unpaid work is hindering financing on his mixed-use redevelopment proposal for the northwest corner of Jefferson Avenue and Van Dyke Street. For several years, Higgins has floated reimagining that Jefferson/Van Dyke corner as 42 apartments — 36 across four stories atop a new parking structure, six in a redeveloped carriage house — renting for 50 percent to 120 percent of the Area Median Income, plus about 17,000 square feet of commercial/retail space. Even though some removal of underground storage tanks took place over the summer, the July 27 lien is causing a lender to not authorize construction draw. The lien came less than a month before T.H. Marsh filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation on Aug. 22, claiming $50,001-$100,000 in assets and $1,000,001-$10 million in liabilities to 100-199 creditors. A trustee, Mark Shapiro, has been appointed. And the lien, the lawsuit says, was filed long after T.H. Marsh did any sort of work on the project. The lawsuit also says that pre-construction liens are prohibited under state law, and that it was filed well after was legally required.

PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals Inc., a publicly traded heart-disease drug developer, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection weeks after being sued for breach of contract by a Blackstone Inc. portfolio company, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The chapter 11 filing follows the breakdown in a three-year partnership between PhaseBio and Blackstone’s SFJ Pharmaceuticals X Ltd. to develop Bentracimab, which helps prevent major bleeding for patients on a blood thinner. PhaseBio said in March there was substantial doubt it could continue as a going concern. After PhaseBio failed to improve on its cash position within six months, SFJ sued two weeks ago, accusing the Malvern, Pa., company of breaching the co-development agreement, according to a filing with the U.S. District Court of Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PhaseBio filed for chapter 11 on Sunday, pressured by the lawsuit. It said in its filings it secured $15 million in loans from JMB Capital Partners to see it through bankruptcy and that it has lined up a strategic buyer to acquire its lead program.

Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn dealt a blow to Celsius Network’s stockholders yesterday, ruling against their motion to form an official committee of equityholders as they seek to stake a claim to the crypto lender’s most valuable assets, Bloomberg News reported. The ruling means holders of Celsius’s preferred equity will have to pay for their own lawyers and advisers during the bankruptcy. Venture capital firm WestCap Management LLC and pension fund Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec (CDPQ) are among the company’s stockholders. Some Celsius stockholders are arguing that they, rather than the company’s customers, are entitled to the value from the crypto lender’s mining business and loan book because of Celsius’s corporate structure. Lawyers for Celsius creditors -- which are overwhelmingly its customers -- disagree. In a written decision issued yesterday, Judge Glenn said the stockholders hadn’t met the legal standard needed to have their advisers’ bills paid for by Celsius. The investors are already adequately represented and haven’t shown that they’ll probably recover money during the bankruptcy, he said.

Sandy Hook families said a Connecticut judge should impose “the highest possible punitive damages” for Alex Jones, suggesting by one calculation that could be as high as $2.75 trillion, Bloomberg News reported. The families said that additional damages are warranted on top of a nearly $1 billion jury award because Jones broke a state law barring the sale of products using false statements. They reached the trillion-dollar sum by multiplying the state law’s up-to $5,000 per-violation fine by the 550 million social media exposures Jones’s audience received on his Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts in the three years following a school shooting that claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six educators in 2012. It was the largest of several damage calculation options the families offered the judge for assessing further penalties. “The only appropriate punitive damages award in this case is the largest award within the court’s power,” the families’ lawyers said in the filing. “The defendants have acted willfully, maliciously, and evilly, in full knowledge of the harm they are causing people who had no means to fight back, except to bring this case.”