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Two hours before church sex abuse victims on a court-appointed committee were scheduled to address Archbishop Gregory Aymond in bankruptcy court, a federal judge put a stop to it and removed four of the six victims from the panel, NOLA.com reported. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill said in her order that she was forced to remove them because one of their attorneys, Richard Trahant, had allegedly disclosed “highly confidential information” in violation of her previous orders. That leaves only two members remaining on a committee representing about 450 alleged victims of sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ two-year-old bankruptcy case. The committee was going to court Tuesday to begin mediation, a process to decide how much money the archdiocese owes its creditors. Victims of sexual abuse by clergy were prepared to argue the church owes them damages for allegedly allowing abuse to happen and covering it up.

A San Francisco-based hospitality group with more than a dozen budget hotels around the Bay Area recently filed chapter 11 bankruptcy for three of them, according to filings with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Golden State Hospitality Group, led by managers Hitesh and Bhavesh Patel, detailed tens of millions in debt in the filings for corporate entities affiliated with hotels in Santa Rosa and Fairfield. The hotel ownership group, headquartered on 33rd Avenue in San Francisco, owns at least 15 hotels across the state from Merced to Elk Grove, including Quality Inn, Super 8 and Holiday Inn franchises around the Bay Area. Bankruptcy filings signed by Hitesh Patel last month for affiliates of a Quality Inn & Suites in Santa Rosa and a La Quinta Inn & Suites in Fairfield indicated assets of more than $10 million and liabilities of more than $10 million and of about $8.3 million, respectively. The most recent petition, filed June 1 for a Holiday Inn Express in Santa Rosa, declared assets of just over $33 million and liabilities of about $30.5 million. The largest claim against the Holiday Inn Express affiliate is from an entity tied to Columbia Pacific Advisors — an investment firm based in Seattle — in the form of a lien entitling it to the deed of trust of the 98-room hotel, valued at $24 million.

A former senior executive at Better.com alleged in a lawsuit that the online mortgage lender misled investors in financial filings and other representations it made as it attempts to go public, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sarah Pierce, Better.com’s former executive vice president for sales and operations, alleged in the suit that Chief Executive Vishal Garg and the company misrepresented Better.com’s business and prospects to keep investors onboard with a planned merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The deal was agreed to in May 2021 and has yet to close. Ms. Pierce said in the suit that she was pushed out of her role at the company in February in retaliation for raising these issues. She has also filed a complaint alleging retaliation with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, according to a footnote in the suit. Better.com was a major winner of the boom in housing prices and mortgage refinancing that accompanied the pandemic and low interest rates. The company grew revenue nearly 10-fold to $876 million in 2020 from the year prior, posted a profit of $172 million and hired thousands as it rushed to keep up with the market, company filings said. It raised $500 million from SoftBank Group Corp. last spring and weeks later said it planned to go public at a valuation of $7 billion. Better.com has since been rocked by the rise in interest rates and resulting sharp pullback in refinancings and a highly publicized controversy when Mr. Garg laid off 900 workers via a Zoom call in December. He took a brief leave after the call sparked an uproar. The company has laid off thousands more as the market for SPAC deals has also cooled.

Bankrupt pharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt Plc will seek expedited approval to raise $650 million in debt to finance its exit from chapter 11, replacing a $900 million loan that fell through amid market volatility, Reuters reported. Mallinckrodt's reorganization plan was approved in February in Delaware bankruptcy court, but the company remains in chapter 11 as it finalizes agreements and works to secure exit funding. Anupama Yerramalli, an attorney for Mallinckrodt from Latham & Watkins, said in court on Monday that the company will seek approval for the new exit financing on Wednesday. The new exit financing will be funded largely by the company's existing bondholders after the earlier-planned loan failed to generate sufficient market interest from debt investors. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey said that he would consider the request, but would give other parties time to object to the fast-track schedule before Wednesday. Andrew Rosenberg of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, an attorney for bondholders who will provide additional financing, urged the court to move quickly, given the volatile market conditions that disrupted the initial $900 million loan and could still imperil the new financing. Mallinckrodt did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its exit from chapter 11. The Ireland-based company makes generic drugs, including opioids, and branded drugs including Acthar Gel, which is used to treat multiple sclerosis and infantile spasms. It filed for chapter 11 protection in 2020 in the face of opioid-related lawsuits and a court battle over Medicaid rebates for Acthar, its top-selling drug. The company's reorganization plan includes a $1.7 billion settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits accusing it of deceptively marketing its opioids. The plan allows Mallinckrodt to reduce $5.3 billion in debt by $1.3 billion and hands control of the reorganized company to creditors.

Infowars is jettisoning its bankruptcy case after families of Sandy Hook school shooting victims who are suing the conspiracy site’s founder, Alex Jones, withdrew from the chapter 11 process, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Properties holding the trademark and web-domain rights to Infowars agreed on Wednesday to dismiss their chapter 11 cases as part of a stipulation with the Justice Department’s bankruptcy watchdog, which has questioned the basis for the bankruptcy. W. Marc Shwartz, a certified public accountant who was retained as Infowars’s chief restructuring officer, determined it was in the best interest of the site and its creditors to end the bankruptcy in light of Sandy Hook families’ decision to effectively withdraw from the chapter 11 process, according to papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Victoria, Texas. The bankruptcy filing threatened the Sandy Hook families with a potentially lengthy delay to their defamation suits against Mr. Jones even though he didn’t file personal bankruptcy. To resume litigation against Mr. Jones, the families agreed last month to drop legal claims against the Infowars properties that were put into chapter 11. The families of the children murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre sued Mr. Jones in 2018 for repeatedly saying the school shooting, which killed 20 first-graders and six adults in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax and falsely claiming the families were actors and faked the deaths of their loved ones. Lawyers representing some families who have sued Mr. Jones have said that the bankruptcy was part of a last-ditch effort to avoid a Texas trial to establish damages against him. A separate damages trial in Connecticut state court is scheduled for September.

Lessor Nordic Aviation Capital (NAC) has emerged from chapter 11, having eliminated nearly $4.1 billion of debt, Aerotime Hub reported. As part of its restructuring process, the lessor increased its liquidity with access to $537 million in additional capital to fund operations. In December 2021, NAC filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. In April 2022, NAC received approval for its restructuring plan from the bankruptcy court. The NAC restructuring plan focused on four initiatives, including balance-sheet stabilization, organizational change, financial growth and portfolio stabilization. As part of the restructuring plan, NAC has appointed a new board of directors. Currently, the new board is led by Norman Liu and Klaus Heinemann.

A bankruptcy judge on Thursday granted approval for an Invenergy-backed power plant to use cash pledged as lender collateral to continue operating under chapter 11, despite opposition from an NRG Energy Inc. unit with a large unsecured claim, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge John Dorsey of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., granted permission in a bench ruling for Invenergy’s Ector County Energy Center LLC to use cash collateral from its secured lenders and rejected objections from NRG’s Direct Energy Business Marketing LLC. Ector, located in Goldsmith, Texas, has proposed selling itself out of chapter 11 to partially pay down more than $400 million in secured debt. Owner Invenergy is the primary borrower on those loans, which are guaranteed by affiliated entities including Ector. Shortly before Ector’s bankruptcy filing in April, Invenergy amended its credit agreement with the secured lenders to make Ector directly responsible, Direct Energy said. Judge Dorsey disagreed, saying that the loan agreement, even before the amendment, put Ector on the hook and that its use of its lenders’ cash collateral will help protect their interests by allowing Ector to continue its operations while in bankruptcy. The judge also approved Ector to continue operating under a shared service agreement with affiliates that provides it with employees for its Texas facility. Ector has said the bankruptcy is expected to make a $75 million dent in its debt pile while addressing more than 100 lawsuits stemming from the extreme winter storm that hit Texas in February 2021.

Chemicals manufacturer TPC Group Inc. has filed for bankruptcy, blaming a combination of factors including thousands of lawsuits and claims arising from a 2019 plant explosion, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Houston-based company, which is owned by private-equity firms First Reserve Corp. and SK Capital Partners LP, said on Wednesday it has reached a restructuring agreement with overwhelming support from two bondholder groups that collectively hold more than $1.1 billion of its secured notes due in 2024. Fortress Investment Group LLC, Monarch Alternative Capital LP and Strategic Value Partners LLC are among creditors supporting the reorganization. TPC said the debt restructuring will help cut $950 million of its roughly $1.3 billion in secured debt from its balance sheet. TPC, whose products are used in synthetic rubber, fuels, lubricants and plastics, had missed an interest payment earlier in the year. The creditors had provided the company with additional liquidity and agreed to exchange their debt for new secured notes due in 2024. Edward Dineen, chairman and chief executive officer, said the bankruptcy is expected to resolve all liabilities arising from the explosion in November 2019. Residents and businesses have been eligible to claim compensation for property damages caused by the explosion, according to the company’s website. Under that claims program, TPC has roughly $15 million in unpaid property damage settlement amounts.

The Carolina Panthers’ proposed $800 million practice facility project in Rock Hill, S.C., has been canceled after team owner David Tepper’s real estate company filed for chapter 11 protection in Delaware on Wednesday night, the Associated Press reported. Tepper, who made billions in hedge funds, is the NFL’s wealthiest owner. The filing will not affect the NFL’s Panthers or Major League Soccer’s Charlotte FC in any way. It’s unclear at this point what will happen to the half-built practice facility. Tepper has invested more than $175 million into the facility, which is located about 25 miles south of the team’s current downtown stadium and headquarters in Charlotte, N.C. GT Real Estate Holdings, LLC (GTRE), a Delaware limited liability company, announced late yesterday that is has begun a court-led financial restructuring process in Delaware to effect an orderly wind-down of the project. The action follows the termination and rescission of the agreements with the City of Rock Hill that related to the project, which GTRE previously announced.

The Supreme Court passed on an appeal, raising questions about bankruptcy court jurisdiction arising from a 2013 train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people, Dow Jones Newswires reported. Justices on Tuesday declined to hear a case brought on behalf of victims who have been seeking to revive lawsuits against Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., one of several companies sued in the disaster. Plaintiffs argued that lower courts improperly applied federal bankruptcy rules to their wrongful-death claims instead of ordinary rules of federal civil procedure governing nonbankruptcy disputes. The distinction resulted in lower courts dismissing their claims against Canadian Pacific.