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“The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” cast member Erika Girardi is seeking to have a lawyer ousted from investigating her estranged husband’s bankrupt law firm, saying that the lawyer made inflammatory statements about her on social media, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Girardi’s lawyers said in a Thursday court filing that lawyer Ronald Richards has made “false and inflammatory social media posts and public statements” about her while working as special litigation counsel in the bankruptcy case of her estranged husband Thomas Girardi’s now-defunct firm, Girardi Keese. She requested a court ruling disqualifying Richards from the bankruptcy proceedings, in which he has named her as a legal target. Mr. Richards said he would file a responsive pleading and that the judge overseeing the bankruptcy case made no free speech restrictions and “any statements made were in compliance with state law.” Richards also said that “we are hopeful that we have full cooperation from Ms. Girardi.” Girardi’s former law firm in Los Angeles, long a prominent player in mass tort litigation nationwide, unraveled in December after he told a federal court in Chicago that he couldn’t account for $2 million that should have been paid from a settlement fund to family members of the victims of a plane crash. A group of his firm’s creditors shortly afterward petitioned to place Girardi Keese into bankruptcy, where a trustee took over its affairs. Ms. Girardi filed for divorce against Mr. Girardi in November.

Corp Group Banking SA, a Chilean financial holding company controlled by billionaire Alvaro Saieh, filed for bankruptcy after the coronavirus pandemic sparked an economic slowdown that worsened fortunes in the banking sector, Bloomberg News reported. The Santiago-based company on Friday sought chapter 11 protection from creditors in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The move was expected after the company skipped an interest payment last year on $500 million of 6.75% notes due 2023 and didn’t cure it when a grace period expired Oct. 15. Corp Group Banking failed to meet its payments after the pandemic and social unrest in Chile affected operations at its main operating unit, lender Itau CorpBanca, a bank in which it owns a 26.6% stake. Amid a severe economic downturn, Itau suspended dividend payments that Corp Group relied on to meet obligations. Saieh, who owns one of Chile’s largest conglomerates with stakes in media, retail, real estate, and hotels, agreed in 2014 to sell his controlling stake in Corpbanca to Itau Unibanco Holding SA for $1.8 billion. Itau Corpbanca announced earlier this month a plan to sell as much as $1.15 billion in new shares to meet Basel III capital requirements.

A bankruptcy judge in Manhattan on Thursday ordered real estate attorney Mitchell Kossoff, who is under criminal investigation, to cooperate with the chapter 7 trustee overseeing the liquidation of his law firm, Reuters reported. Within a week, Kossoff and his criminal defense attorney, Walter Mack of Doar Rieck Kaley & Mack, have to meet with chapter 7 trustee Al Togut, who has been seeking everything from bank and credit card records to client lists, Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones ordered. Togut has asserted Kossoff's refusal to provide records has affected his ability to administer the estate of Kossoff PLLC. The meeting between Togut's team of attorneys from his law firm, Togut, Segal & Segal, and Mack should flesh out what documents are available and what documents Mack believes are protected by the 5th Amendment, Judge Jones said.

A government lawyer has selected the head of Squire Patton Boggs’ global restructuring practice to investigate the independence of a special committee that struck a deal with the Sackler family members who own the OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP, Reuters reported. The U.S. Department of Justice’s bankruptcy watchdog, the U.S. Trustee, selected Squire’s Stephen Lerner for the role, according to court papers filed yesterday. The appointment comes a week after U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, N.Y., said that he would allow an examiner to explore whether the special committee of Purdue’s board was influenced at all by the Sackler family members in reaching a settlement that protects them against opioid-related litigation. The judge said during a contentious court hearing on June 16 that he did not know of any evidence to suggest the deal was negotiated unfairly but would bring in an examiner anyway out of fear of misleading press reports. U.S. Trustee William Harrington said in yesterday’s court filing that in selecting Lerner for the role, he consulted with lawyers for Purdue and its official committee of unsecured creditors, as well as supporters and opponents of the settlement.

The Boy Scouts of America said it could drop a $650 million settlement with insurer Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. if the youth organization can’t break an impasse with sex-abuse victims opposed to the agreement, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The development described in papers filed Friday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., concerns a mechanism in the Boy Scouts’ proposal for compensating thousands of men who were victimized as children. Victims groups have said they would vote down any compensation plan that includes the Hartford settlement, which they have criticized as inadequate. The Boy Scouts said if they can’t reach an accord with victims groups on the Hartford deal in coming weeks, they would seek guidance from the judge presiding over its bankruptcy on what to do with the insurance agreement at a July hearing. Absent a breakthrough, the Boy Scouts said that they would explore dropping the Hartford deal.

The owner of the Limetree Bay oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands is in early restructuring talks with creditors after pollution incidents and a cash crunch shut down the troubled plant indefinitely, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Limetree Bay Energy LLC said on Monday the St. Croix-based refinery would close indefinitely, clouding its future and throwing into doubt a crucial economic driver in the struggling U.S. territory. Private-equity investor EIG Global Energy Partners controls the refinery, which previously went through bankruptcy in 2015, emerged under private ownership and started refining fuel again in February after a nearly decade-long hiatus. EIG had hoped to succeed where the facility’s previous backers couldn’t, but had to idle the refinery last month after a flaring incident rained oil droplets on nearby residential areas. Limetree Bay abandoned hopes for a quick restart after failing to secure the necessary funding, the company said Monday. Creditors that financed the refinery are now bracing for losses and evaluating their options, people familiar with the matter said. EIG didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Without a clear path to resuming operations, Limetree Bay has engaged law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP to handle restructuring negotiations. Lenders to the refinery, including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, have tapped law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. Read more. 

An upscale retirement community in Port Washington, N.Y., has filed for bankruptcy protection from its creditors for the second time in seven years, records show, Newsday reported. The Amsterdam at Harborside, a nonprofit opened in 2010, stopped making debt payments and refunds of resident entrance fees during the pandemic. As a result, the 329-unit facility is no longer in compliance with state law, according to documents filed last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Central Islip. Amsterdam officials said on Tuesday that "there will be no staff layoffs or reduction or disruption" of services for the 375 people who live at the facility. In the filing, Amsterdam CEO James Davis said that the coronavirus had "exacerbated" the facility's "historic financial challenges" of not being able to attract enough new residents to pay day-to-day bills and the entrance-fee refunds owed to the relatives of deceased residents. The same challenges, along with the 2007-09 recession, led the Amsterdam to file for bankruptcy protection in July 2014, according to Newsday articles from the period. The retirement community, at 300 East Overlook, exited bankruptcy court in early 2015 after restructuring its debt, including tax-exempt bonds issued by the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency. The community also secured $550,000 in IDA property-tax breaks over nine years. That was on top of a 25-year tax deal awarded in 2007, the articles state. "Seven years ago, no one could have anticipated that a global pandemic would hit in 2020 and the effect it would have on our cash flow," Davis said on Tuesday in a statement.

A Kansas City payday loan business owner was sentenced yesterday in federal court to spend one year plus a day in prison after pleading guilty to filing a false bankruptcy claim as he sought to offload $7.5 million in debt, the Kansas City Star reported. Del Hodges Kimball pleaded guilty in January to a single count of bankruptcy fraud. In addition to his prison time, Kimball is ordered to pay more than $900,000 in restitution, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri said. Authorities alleged that he spent two years lying about his financial position while holding on to assets he secretly owned to avoid paying back his lenders. In his plea, Kimball admitted his scheme was concocted to defraud the bankruptcy court by concealing assets, bank accounts and making false statements, federal prosecutors said. Acting U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore said the bankruptcy system Kimball admitted to exploiting relies on the honesty, openness and accuracy of those in debt seeking a fresh start. The criminal charges were related to a personal bankruptcy case Kimball brought in 2015. Kimball and payday loan company LTS Management, which he co-owned, were forced into bankruptcy by creditors claiming to be owed millions of dollars from investments into payday lending. In 2017, a bankruptcy trustee accused Kimball of concealing assets, bank accounts and income from his bankruptcy disclosures. Those omissions, according to the trustee, included his sale of a warehouse for nearly $1 million, the sale of three cars for more than $120,000, eight wrist watches worth more than $29,000 and a painting by Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. All the while, Kimball claimed he lost millions of dollars in 2013 and 2014 while he actually had a gross income of nearly $160,000 in 2013 and more than $213,000 in 2014, federal prosecutors said.

Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Kahn has confirmed K&W Cafeteria Inc.’s chapter 11 reorganization plan, which calls for keeping 14 stores open while paying off largest creditor Truist Financial Corp. by July 1, 2022, the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal reported. K&W, a Winston-Salem-based staple of Southern comfort foods for 84 years, filed for Chapter 11 protection on Sept. 2 as the latest step in a corporate downsizing that began before the COVID-19 pandemic. K&W submitted its reorganization plan on March 31. Judge Kahn. approved the plan on Tuesday. K&W had 18 restaurants open at the time of the bankruptcy filing, including three in Winston-Salem and 14 in North Carolina. It now has 14 locations, including those on Healy Drive and on Hanes Mill Road in Winston-Salem. It has closed the South Park location off Peters Creek Parkway. K&W said it had 1,035 employees when it entered bankruptcy, but was down to 834 employees as of the Dec. 23 filing.

The pandemic killed the resurrected XFL, and the league, before being sold to The Rock, went through bankruptcy. Now, the players for XFL 2.0 have gotten their money, NBCSports.com reported. XFL players will get as little as four cents on the dollar for their claims for unpaid wages, according to a report on TheAthletic.com. The average claims were in the range of $14,000. Some will get less than $600. They won’t get the money until the end of this year or early next year. XFL 3.0 will return as soon as 2022.