A bankruptcy judge in Los Angeles has cleared the way for the brother of famed plaintiffs’ lawyer Tom Girardi to serve as his guardian during bankruptcy proceedings, Reuters reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Barry Russell on Tuesday said there was no need for him to rule on Robert Girardi’s motion to serve as guardian ad litem because a state court earlier this month appointed Robert Girardi as his brother’s temporary conservator.
In an email, the board president of the Continental Country Club HOA in Arizona said that the organization is facing several financial challenges, including the issue over Lake Elaine, the Arizona Daily Sun reported. Jon Held, the president of the association’s board of directors, said the filing will not impact day-to-day operations of the country club, including the public golf course and the Oakmont Restaurant, and won't mean any layoffs. “This filing allows Continental and its homeowners the chance for a fresh start so we can best address several issues,” Held said. “In some cases, these problems predate the current board by years, if not decades. For the good of our residents and those who enjoy our facilities, it was time to take action.” In a media release, the HOA board seemed to attribute most of their problems to recent legal action over Lake Elaine, a man-made lake within the country club that has been the center of controversy for years. First used to store water for the golf course, Lake Elaine is now only aesthetic, but has been leaking water for decades. For every four gallons of water that is pumped into the lake each day, three gallons are lost to seepage into the ground. In 1988, a group of lakeside homeowners filed a class action lawsuit against the HOA that mandated that the HOA should keep the lake full, but so far, no significant repairs to stop seepage have moved forward. In 2017, residents came back and asked the court to hold the HOA in contempt for not following through on its mandate to keep the lake full.
The Justice Department’s bankruptcy monitor wants the National Rifle Association’s go-to lawyers barred from representing the gun-rights group in its chapter 11 case, citing “disqualifying conflicts” and previous allegations of billing improprieties, the Wall Street Journal reported. Brewer Attorneys & Counselors, a law firm that has represented the NRA in court and administrative proceedings across the country, isn’t suitable to be part of the crew of court-supervised lawyers handling the gun group’s bankruptcy, according to a Tuesday court filing by the U.S. Trustee, which oversees bankruptcy courts for the U.S. government. In addition to the NRA itself, the Brewer firm has also represented Wayne LaPierre, the group’s chief executive officer and a prime target of litigation brought by New York’s attorney general alleging rampant financial misdeeds. LaPierre is now separately represented, according to an NRA spokesman. But the prior relationship between LaPierre and the Brewer firm makes it “highly unlikely” that as the NRA’s counsel the Brewer firm would look into or advocate for any claims the group may have against him, the U.S. Trustee said. “The statements in this legal filing, like others, reflect a misinformed view of the Brewer firm, its billings and its advocacy for the NRA,” said Charles L. Cotton, first vice president of the NRA. “I, and all the officers, fully support the work the firm is doing, the results achieved, and the value of its services. As we have stated before, this relationship has been reviewed, vetted and approved,” he said.
A committee of clergy-abuse victims is seeking a bankruptcy-court order to force the Diocese of Rockville Centre to hand over an internal report detailing the institution’s transfer of millions of dollars of assets within the past four years, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Lawyers for an official committee of abuse survivors filed papers on Friday seeking a report on a number of transactions carried out by the suburban Long Island diocese, including the transfer of cemeteries, real estate in Huntington, N.Y., and $3 million in cash to a number of affiliates. Abuse victims’ efforts to force the diocese to disclose details of the diocese-authorized inquiry signals potential coming fights over transfers it undertook that victims believe may have shielded valuable assets from those seeking compensation. Rockville Centre filed for bankruptcy in October, becoming the largest diocese to seek chapter 11 protection in response to lawsuits by victims of sexual abuse. Friday’s court filing concerns the Independent Advisory Committee, a body the diocese created in 2019 to investigate, litigate and settle any potential claims that the transfers were fraudulent and carried out to shift assets beyond the reach of abuse survivors.
The owner of a lavish hotel development near the site of Coachella, the famous California music festival, has filed for bankruptcy after lawsuits and delays stymied its plans, Bloomberg News reported. Glenroy Coachella LLC, which owns the Hotel Indigo development, sought chapter 11 protection yesterday in Los Angeles, according to a bankruptcy petition. The entity listed assets of $50 million to $100 million and liabilities of $10 million to $50 million. The bankruptcy filing comes after Stuart Rubin, manager of the project, faced a lawsuit from his business partner, Gary Stiffelman, for $50 million amid allegations of “incompetence and fraud,” according to the Palm Springs Desert Sun. The lawsuit alleged that the development spent two separate budgets of $25 million. Hotel Indigo, a division of InterContinental Hotels Group Plc, doesn’t list the Coachella location among its current properties. Construction on the project began in early 2017 under the guidance of Rubin’s son, Joseph, and was met with delays almost immediately, according to the Stiffelman lawsuit. The project was supposed to be completed in time for the 2018 edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, according to the lawsuit. Hotel Indigo Coachella was billed as a luxe, 35-acre resort close to the festival grounds, complete with a DJ stage, catwalk, 10,000-square-foot (3,049 square meter) pool, casitas and 250 guest rooms, according to a 2018 article from the Los Angeles Times.
Country Fresh Holding Co., a supplier of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables and ready-to-go meals, has filed for bankruptcy and is planning to sell all or most of its assets in the U.S. and Canada after pressures arising from the coronavirus pandemic, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Woodlands, Texas-based Country Fresh, part of the Fresh Food Group, has named private-equity firm Stellex Capital Management LLC as the lead bidder for most of its assets after filing for chapter 11 protection on Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston. Three other affiliates in Canada are expected to also file proceedings under Canada’s equivalent of chapter 11, according to court papers. The proposed sale, subject to higher offers, would put Stellex in control of the company’s U.S. and Canadian assets out of bankruptcy, with the exception of a facility in Vancouver and its associated operations, in exchange for $30 million in cash and $25 million in secured debt. Stellex will roll those assets into a to-be-formed company while assuming certain liabilities, court papers said. The Fresh Food Group began in 1999 with the inception of Country Fresh LLC. Initially, the company focused on providing fresh-cut fruit and vegetables in a variety of blends, sizes, and packaging options, according to court papers.
Hertz has secured bankruptcy court approval of its 2021 incentive plan, which offers executives up to $12 million in bonuses if they meet certain financial goals and bankruptcy-related deadlines, Reuters reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath in Wilmington, Delaware signed off on the plan at the conclusion of a remote hearing on Tuesday. The car rental company, represented by White & Case, filed for bankruptcy protection last May with $19 billion in debt as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the travel industry.
A federal judge denied Citigroup Inc.’s request to claw back roughly $500 million it mistakenly paid out of its own pocket to investment firms that made loans to cosmetics giant Revlon Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported. Brigade Capital Management LP and other Revlon lenders can keep the money they collected from Citi when the bank wired them the full amount they were owed instead of the small interest payment that was due, according to a written ruling Tuesday by Judge Jesse Furman of U.S. District Court in New York. The August blunder by Citi, Revlon’s loan agent, satisfied a nearly $900 million debt that Revlon wasn’t due to pay until 2023 and delivered an unexpected windfall to lenders on what had become an increasingly risky investment. While some lenders that were mistakenly paid returned roughly $385 million to Citi, others refused the bank’s request for repayment, touching off a legal dispute that strained relationships with big investors like Brigade, a longtime Citi client, and raised questions with analysts about the bank’s internal controls. Judge Furman issued the decision after holding a trial in December that focused on the pivotal question of what Brigade and other recipients knew or suspected soon after they were paid. Citi, which has blamed the snafu on human error, argued that recipients knew right away they had been paid in error. They said they didn’t think the transactions were erroneous until Citi claimed as much and demanded repayment.
The New York attorney general called for the dismissal of the National Rifle Association’s bankruptcy, alleging it was filed to escape state oversight, Bloomberg News reported. The case is improper because the NRA has openly stated that the gun rights organization is “in its strongest financial condition in years,” New York said in a filing on Friday in bankruptcy court in Texas. The chapter 11 was also brought in bad faith to avoid New York’s lawsuit seeking to dissolve it, the state said. The NRA is “essentially fleeing or seeking an end run around a pending regulatory enforcement action in New York,” the state said in the filing. The lawsuit filed last year by New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges the NRA diverted charitable donations for years to enrich the organization’s top executives in violation of laws governing nonprofits. The state in its filings also took aim at NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, who it claims fleeced the gun rights organization. LaPierre has disputed New York’s allegations. LaPierre, who was among the signers of the group’s bankruptcy petition, “is accused of looting the NRA, yet he has made the determination and signed the petitions in an effort to use the bankruptcy court to remove the NRA from regulatory oversight,” the state said in its filings.
The law firms defending Purdue Pharma LP in probes into its OxyContin painkiller didn’t disclose an existing deal with Purdue’s owners to keep information shared between them confidential when the drugmaker filed for bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and WilmerHale received court permission in November 2019 to continue working for Purdue after it sought chapter 11 protection. But the firms’ nondisclosure of the agreement with the members of the Sackler family who own Purdue, and whose interests are at odds with company creditors, skirted bankruptcy rules meant to reveal potential conflicts of interest, bankruptcy experts said. Earlier this week, Michael Quinn, a lawyer representing five people with wrongful death and personal injury claims against Purdue, questioned whether the 2018 defense agreement restricted what Skadden and WilmerHale could disclose to creditors as they have probed whether they can recover billions of dollars from the drugmaker’s owners. Even though the law firms have represented Purdue for years, they have additional obligations to company creditors while the company is in chapter 11. A separate committee of Purdue creditors has been probing the transfer of billions of dollars from Purdue to the Sacklers before the company filed bankruptcy, according to court documents. The committee is examining if these roughly $10 billion in transfers to the Sacklers can be recovered for the benefit of Purdue creditors, court papers say. Mr. Quinn said in his letter he is concerned that the obligation in the defense agreement to keep Sackler information confidential conflicted with Skadden’s and WilmerHale’s duties in bankruptcy to Purdue and its creditors. The Sacklers have consistently denied throughout the bankruptcy case that the transfers were improper and said more than half the money was used to pay taxes or invested in international ventures. However, they offered to cede control of Purdue and pay a $3 billion cash settlement to resolve creditor claims against them.
