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An attorney for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe expressed hope Monday a resolution could be announced today in its 3½-year bankruptcy case, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported. “I’m pleased to tell the court that we are very, very close,” Tom Walker of Albuquerque told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Thuma in an update. Walker asked that a status conference scheduled for yesterday be moved to Tuesday to allow for more negotiations, and Judge Thuma complied. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2018 and has been trying to raise money to work out a settlement with about 400 people who allege sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy members. The archdiocese also has become entangled in conflict with some of its insurers over how much they should pay. Insurance is expected to provide a chunk of whatever sum goes to the accusers. The archdiocese has said it attempted to verify the accusations and therefore is fairly certain most or all involved in this case are victims of clergy abuse. Judge Thuma said yesterday that he understood the parties involved are “close to reaching a deal.”

A well-known Minnesota gymnastics school has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in three years, the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal reported. Eagan, Minn.-based Gleason's Gymnastic School Inc. filed a voluntary petition for chapter 11 bankruptcy in early May, according to records filed in Federal Bankruptcy Court. The move comes after the school filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019, but that reorganization was never completed. The current case is a new filing, but deals with some of the old debts and issues. The pandemic caused Gleason's to miss scheduled court filing dates in the prior case. Gleason's had a reorganization plan in the works, but the government-mandated closures wrought havoc on that too, according to Tom Olive, Gleason's attorney. The school also closed its Brooklyn Park location during the pandemic, which was a drain on the operation overall, Olive added. There are no plans to close the remaining location in Eagan. "It’s positive cash flow," Olive said of the Eagan facility. "It’s got a good customer base. (The new filing is) just taking care of this residual debt from the old location.” The gymnastics school estimates it has between $500,001 and $1 million in assets and liabilities, according to the filings.

Pareteum Corporation and certain affiliates, a global cloud communications-platform-as-a-service company, yesterday filed for chapter 11 protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, according to a company press release. The company intends to execute a strategic asset sale under section 363 of the Code while addressing legacy issues. Prior to the filing of the company's chapter 11 cases, the company's board of directors and management evaluated a wide range of strategic alternatives and implemented a strategic asset sale strategy. After a thorough marketing process to obtain a stalking-horse bidder for a court-supervised sale process and as a result of arm's length negotiations, Circles MVNE Pte. Ltd. has combined with Channel Ventures Group, LLC to execute a stalking horse asset purchase agreement for substantially all of the assets of the company. Circles has agreed to acquire the company's Mobile Virtual Network Enabler business and associated contracts, and CVG has agreed to acquire the Company's Mobile Virtual Network Operator, IDM, iPass, and Small and Medium Business Enterprise businesses and associated contracts. These agreements are subject to higher and better offers, among other conditions, as well as approval from the bankruptcy court.

Families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims are close to an agreement to resume their defamation lawsuits against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars site following a delay caused by its bankruptcy filing, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families said in a court hearing Friday they would move the defamation litigation pending against Mr. Jones back to state court in exchange for permanently dropping legal claims against a few Infowars properties that filed chapter 11 in April. The arrangement, which hasn’t been finalized, would let families escape the bankruptcy case and resume their lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas state courts, where Mr. Jones has already been found liable in the litigation. Families would also be clear to proceed with claims against Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems LLC, which hasn’t filed chapter 11. Families’ lawyers have accused Mr. Jones, who also didn’t file personal bankruptcy, of placing certain media assets in chapter 11 to avoid being held accountable for falsely claiming the 2012 school shooting was a hoax. His lawyers have denied the bankruptcy was filed in bad faith and said that chapter 11 was the appropriate forum for settling the families’ legal claims.

After a prolonged mediation process, the LeClairRyan bankruptcy estate looks to have reached a sizable settlement in one of the case’s most high-profile disputes, RichmondBizSense.com reported. The collapsed Richmond law firm’s liquidation trustee has agreed to settle her dispute with legal services giant UnitedLex for $21 million, according to court transcripts. Trustee Lynn Tavenner had initially sued UnitedLex in 2020, seeking $128 million in damages, claiming the company wrongfully benefited from LeClairRyan’s demise through their failed ULX Partners joint venture. The settlement fends off a trial between the two sides that had been set to begin today and run through May 27. It also allows all involved to walk away without admitting fault or liability. The agreement, which still must be approved by the court, was preliminarily reached less than an hour before the parties had to meet in front of Judge Kevin Huennekens on April 19. At that hearing, Erika Morabito, an attorney with law firm Quinn Emanuel representing Tavenner, presented a summary of the settlement. The $21 million in cash would be paid from several sources, Morabito said, according to a transcript of the hearing. The largest chunk would be $12.25 million in insurance proceeds from a policy through CNA that covered UnitedLex. Another $8.25 million would come directly from UnitedLex and its private equity backer CVC Capital Partners. An additional $500,000 would come from another insurance policy from Travelers Insurance Co.

Lenders to Jordan Health Services, a Dallas-based home healthcare provider, have hired restructuring advisers in anticipation of negotiations on the company’s debt as it struggles with rising labor costs, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Jordan Health, which in 2018 combined with two other home health service providers, is grappling with the pressures of rising wages and the challenges of a merger integration process as well as about $1 billion in debt, the people also said. A group of senior lenders have hired law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP and financial adviser PJT Partners Inc. The 2018 combination brought together the holdings of two private-equity firms. Kelso & Co., which owned Jordan Health, merged it with Blue Wolf Capital Partners’ Great Lakes Caring and National Home Health Care. The company’s attempt to stitch together the three operations has hit some bumps and weighed on its performance, people familiar with the matter said. Lenders are early in the process of assessing their options, and they could agree to a restructuring outside of bankruptcy. Jordan’s senior loans started sliding in March, trading down to just over 70 cents on the dollar on Wednesday from over 81 cents in mid-March, according to data provider IHS Markit.

A federal appeals court has agreed to review Johnson & Johnson’s use of a bankruptcy tactic to shift into chapter 11 mass litigation that alleges the company’s talc-based baby powder caused cancer, the Wall Street Journal reported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit yesterday granted requests by talc injury claimants for an immediate review of an emerging strategy used by J&J and a handful of other large, solvent companies to freeze roughly a quarter of a million injury lawsuits through bankruptcy. The appeal stems from a February ruling by Judge Michael Kaplan of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Trenton, N.J., declining to throw out the chapter 11 case of LTL Management LLC, a newly formed J&J subsidiary created to carry talc-related liabilities into chapter 11. Judge Kaplan agreed with J&J that the bankruptcy case was filed for a valid purpose, saying that chapter 11 provides cancer victims with a fairer and more efficient forum to receive compensation than the civil jury system. Injury claimants argued that J&J’s strategy isn’t permitted by the bankruptcy code and have sought to overturn Judge Kaplan’s ruling through an appeal. The ruling kept roughly 38,000 talc injury lawsuits paused in bankruptcy, aiding J&J’s efforts to settle current and future claims alleging its talc-based baby powder caused cancer, which the company denies. Despite allowing the bankruptcy case to proceed, Judge Kaplan said in March that the Third Circuit should review his decision as soon as possible. To access bankruptcy, J&J used a Texas law to fill the LTL subsidiary with talc-related liabilities and limited business operations before it filed chapter 11.

Fidelity Management & Research Co. and Apollo Global Management Inc. alleged that a Texas oil driller’s junior bondholders are improperly financing a legal dispute over who should control the company following its 2020 bankruptcy restructuring, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Investors are still fighting over an 80% stake in Mesquite Energy Inc. nearly two years after the company, then known as Sanchez Energy Corp., exited from chapter 11. As part of the bankruptcy plan, the business allocated a 20% equity stake to top lenders Fidelity and Apollo while placing the remaining stock in a lockbox, to be divided depending on the outcome of the separate litigation. That dispute remains unresolved in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston. However, senior lenders including Fidelity and Apollo are now alleging that junior bondholders ran afoul of Mesquite’s court-approved chapter 11 plan by arranging outside funding to cover ongoing legal costs, according to court papers filed on Tuesday. The financing agreements propose “transferring a significant portion of the unsecured creditors’ recoveries” from the bankruptcy lawsuit to four investment funds in return for help with the costs of litigation, the court filings said. That may exceed the authority granted to an appointed representative of all unsecured creditors that is advocating on their behalf in the dispute over the 80% of the company, according to a complaint the lenders filed on Wednesday.

Cypress Environmental Partners, L.P. announced yesterday that it filed for chapter 11 protection and reached a restructuring support agreement with its priority senior secured lender, an affiliate of Argonaut Private Equity, that is expected to clear approximately $58 million worth of debt, according to a company press release. The petition was filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston division. Paul Hastings LLP is serving as legal counsel. Judge Marvin Isgur entered a series of interim orders on "first day" motions that will facilitate Cypress’s continued normal business operations and reorganization efforts, including continuing to pay employee wages and other obligations. In addition, the Court heard Cypress’s emergency scheduling motion and set a hearing date of June 21, 2022 to consider both Cypress’s prepetition solicitation and confirmation of its pre-packaged plan of reorganization. Cypress also secured a $5 million debtor-in-possession financing facility from Argonaut that, combined with cash from operations, would provide enough liquidity during the chapter 11 proceedings to continue business as usual. The facility is subject to court approval.

LATAM Airlines Group SA, the largest air transport group in Latin America, said on Wednesday that it garnered support from almost all of its creditors for a reorganization plan that the company is taking before a U.S. court, Reuters reported. The airline said that the agreement was presented to a Manhattan bankruptcy court that is handling its chapter 11 bankruptcy case, which it filed for in May 2020 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its operations. The agreement includes bondholders in Chile, the Official Committee of Valista Creditors (UCC), the Ad Hoc group of LATAM creditors (led by Sixth Street, Strategic Value Partners and Sculptor Capital) and the main shareholders, the company said in a statement. "The agreement will allow the creditors who choose to receive the Class A Convertible Bonds or the Class C Convertible Bonds contemplated in the Reorganization Plan, to improve their recovery through an additional cash payment," it said. The firm had presented the plan, diluting shares, in November last year. The hearing is scheduled for May 17 at which LATAM’s lawyers will ask U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Garrity to approve the proposal. The plan proposes an $8.19 billion infusion through a mix of new equity, convertible notes and debt.