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A Texas judge on Wednesday pushed back the first jury trial over how much conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay the families of Sandy Hook victims after his Infowars company sought bankruptcy protection this week, the Associated Press reported. The delay ordered by state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble comes days after Infowars and two other companies tied to Jones filed for chapter 11 protection in Texas. Jones has lost defamation lawsuits in Texas and Connecticut over his comments that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax. The first trial over how much he should pay the families had been scheduled to begin Monday in Austin, where Infowars is headquartered. A new trial date has not been set. Attorneys for Sandy Hook families have accused Jones of trying to hide millions of dollars in assets. Creditors listed in Infowars’ bankruptcy filing include relatives of some of the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 school massacre in Connecticut.

Lightstone Generation LLC, a power company that operates one of the largest coal-fired electricity plants in the U.S., is preparing to ask lenders to let the struggling company push off an upcoming debt repayment, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company, a joint venture between private-equity firms ArcLight Capital Partners and Blackstone Group, is planning to launch a debt exchange within days that would push out the maturity of the bulk of its $1.7 billion term loan by three years to 2027. To entice lenders to hold on to Lightstone’s debt, the company is offering sweeteners, including requiring it to channel any excess cash flow to pay down the new loan until the company reduces its debt load to about half of current levels. Lightstone is also offering a $100 million paydown immediately if at least 90% of its existing lenders agree. Investment bank Jefferies LLC and law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP are advising Lightstone on the effort, while law firm Milbank LLP is advising a group of lenders. The proposed refinancing is seen as a test of investors’ willingness to back issuers tied to coal at a time when some large capital providers have pledged to steer clear of companies responsible for heavy carbon emissions.

GWG Holdings Inc., an alternative asset manager known for selling life-insurance bonds to retail investors, filed for bankruptcy yesterday after accounting issues and the resignation of its auditor prevented it from continuing to sell its products, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Dallas-based GWG created financial instruments called L Bonds, which pooled money from bond investors to purchase life-insurance policies on the secondary market, aiming to use payouts from the policies when people die to repay the investors. The company enters chapter 11 with more than $1.6 billion of L Bonds outstanding, mostly owned by individual investors who bought them after hearing a sales pitch from regional broker-dealers who sold the bonds on GWG’s behalf. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that GWG was preparing to file for bankruptcy amid a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the company’s financial accounting and its issuance of L Bonds. The SEC probe, which began in 2020, remains ongoing, GWG Chief Financial Officer Timothy Evans said in court papers Wednesday. GWG was forced to stop selling additional L Bonds because of accounting problems that delayed the filing of its 2020 annual report, as well as the resignation of its auditor, leading the company to fail to make interest payments to L Bond holders in January. Many of the investors in the L Bonds are elderly or retired individuals, some of whom invested much of their life savings, according to a number of L Bond holders and broker-dealers who sold them the securities.

A New Jersey Catholic diocese has agreed to pay $87.5 million to settle claims involving clergy sex abuse with some 300 alleged victims in one of the largest cash settlements involving the Catholic church in the United States, the Associated Press reported. The agreement between the Diocese of Camden, which encompasses six counties in southern New Jersey on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and plaintiffs was filed with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Camden on Tuesday. The settlement must still go before a U.S. bankruptcy judge. If approved, the settlement would exceed the nearly $85 million settlement in 2003 in the clergy abuse scandal in Boston, although it’s less than other settlements in California and Oregon. Details about what allegedly happened to the roughly 300 victims were not included in the proposed settlement, according to an attorney for some 70 of the victims.

The judge overseeing Gulf Coast Health Care LLC's bankruptcy has pushed the final hearing on its proposed liquidation plan to next week to allow opponents of the deal to review a report that analyzes potential litigation against people and entities associated with the bankrupt nursing home operator, Reuters reported. The report, which was not public, became a point of contention on Tuesday, which was set to be the first full day of the hearing on the plan. But a few hours into the hearing, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Karen Owens in Wilmington, Del., expressed frustration as witnesses for Gulf Coast attempted to rely on the results of the report in their testimony, despite the fact that the report itself was kept under wraps. "It's problematic," Owens said. In response to the judge’s remarks, Gulf Coast attorney Daniel Simon of McDermott Will & Emery said his team would make the report available to the judge and the opponents of the plan by the end of the day. The hearing will resume on April 27.

Alabama on Tuesday reached $276 million in settlements with Johnson & Johnson, McKesson Corp and Endo International Plc, resolving claims that the companies fueled an opioid addiction crisis, the state attorney general said, Reuters reported. Under the settlement, drug distributor McKesson will pay $141 million toward the state's efforts to combat the opioid crisis, while drugmakers Johnson & Johnson and Endo will pay $70.3 million and $25 million, respectively, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. The three companies will also pay $40 million in attorneys' fees. The state had accused McKesson of failing to prevent the diversion of opioids for illicit purposes, and the drugmakers of engaging in deceptive marketing practices that downplayed the addiction risks of their painkillers. The companies have denied wrongdoing. Alabama was one of four states that declined to join a nationwide $26 billion settlement of opioid litigation by McKesson, two other top U.S. distributors and J&J that was finalized in February. “These three settlement agreements affirm my decision to decline participation in the national opioid settlements, which did not adequately acknowledge the unique harm that Alabamians have endured," Marshall said in a statement.

Black News Channel has won a federal judge’s permission to borrow desperately needed funds from its owner so the troubled media outlet can keep operating while it searches for a buyer, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy Judge Karen Specie said in a hearing yesterday that she’d let the television network borrow about $1.6 million from an entity affiliated with Shahid Khan, the billionaire who has been financing BNC since 2018. The cash will let BNC keep paying vendors and its few remaining employees while it tries to quickly line up a buyer for the operations. BNC, a television outlet catering to people of color, was on the precipice of shutting down entirely and selling itself in pieces late last month after running desperately low on funds. The outfit shrank its operations and fired almost all of its employees, many of whom still haven’t been paid for work done just before the bankruptcy, court papers show. Instead of liquidating, the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy and has since worked to keep operating on a much smaller scale. Just 17 employees remained when it filed for bankruptcy, a fraction of the more than 300 people working for the Tallahassee-based broadcaster six months ago, but BNC in the last week moved to rehire seven employees that’ll help the channel stay on the air, according to court papers.

Relatives of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre could have a harder time collecting from far-right radio host Alex Jones under the legal strategy being employed by the conspiracy theorist, Bloomberg News reported. Companies tied to Jones filed for bankruptcy on Sunday seeking special rules reserved for small business owners who have fallen on hard times. Those rules would speed up proceedings and reduce the families’ influence on the reorganization by preventing them from forming a creditors committee. Jones acknowledged in an internet broadcast that his Infowars empire is under heavy financial strain and asked listeners for money. The relatives of Sandy Hook victims won key court rulings against Jones after he called the shootings a hoax. A trial in Connecticut will eventually determine the size of the damages. He was also found liable in similar proceedings in Texas. Three entities, including one that holds the rights to the website Infowars, sought chapter 11 protection in Victoria, Texas. Each estimated liabilities of as much as $10 million, according to court filings. Jones’ main holding company, Free Speech Systems LLC, didn’t file for bankruptcy. Under small-business bankruptcy rules, known as Subchapter V, the Sandy Hook families won’t be able to join an official committee of creditors, which can have influence in major corporate cases but aren’t typically set up in Subchapter V filings. Subchapter V cases are limited to private companies that face only a few million dollars in debt, and rarely involve complicated legal disputes like whether a parent company can be shielded from lawsuits without filing for bankruptcy itself. In the Infowars bankruptcy, lawyers set up a trust that would pay people suing the companies, and Jones handed over his equity in the entities to the trust. The units in bankruptcy “have no purpose other than to hold assets which may be used by other entities” and their only liabilities are the litigation claims, according to court papers. By establishing a trust to settle legal claims in bankruptcy, Jones’s companies are following a controversial playbook used by other corporations facing significant lawsuits. Companies including opioid maker Purdue Pharma LP and youth organization Boy Scouts of America have sought chapter 11 protection to settle thousands of cases and streamline payouts to victims claiming harm. Jones put $725,000 of his own money into the trust to cover the costs of the chapter 11 filings. Additional funds, including $2 million cash, could flow into the trust as a result of the bankruptcy, according to court papers. The trust is a way to ensure litigation creditors can be paid in full, rather than get uneven payouts simply due to the timing of trials, lawyers for the companies said in court papers. Jury selection for the Texas trial is set to begin next week, while the Connecticut trial is still months away.

Johnson & Johnson said yesterday that it agreed to pay $99 million to settle claims by West Virginia that it helped fuel an opioid addiction crisis in the state, removing the company from an ongoing trial that began earlier this month, Reuters reported. West Virginia is still pursuing claims against Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd and AbbVie Inc's Allergan in the Kanawha County Circuit Court trial for their alleged role in the crisis. The state accused the companies of causing a "tsunami" of addiction. J&J did not admit liability or wrongdoing in the settlement, the company said. The other companies, which have previously denied the accusations, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. West Virginia previously reached a $26 million settlement with Endo International Plc, which had also been a defendant in the ongoing trial.