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The Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame has filed for bankruptcy, the Tulsa World reported. The news broke in the middle of an eviction hearing before a special judge in the Tulsa County District Court Small Claims Division. Jason McIntosh, executive director of the Jazz Hall of Fame, confirmed the bankruptcy filing but declined to comment further at the advice of counsel. The Tulsa County Industrial Authority filed a lawsuit in November seeking to terminate its lease with the Jazz Hall and recover $8,474 in past-due taxes and utilities. The lawsuit also alleges that the Jazz Hall fell so far behind in its utility payments that electricity to the building was turned off on Oct. 19. The Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame leases the Union Depot, at First Street and Cincinnati Avenue, a facility bought and refurbished by the county with $4 million in Vision 2025 funds. It pays $1 a year in rent and is required to cover tax, insurance and utility costs. The bankruptcy filing puts an automatic stay on the Industrial Authority’s case until the bankruptcy proceedings are completed.

A bankruptcy judge won’t shorten the timeline for victims of clergy sex abuse to bring claims against the Roman Catholic diocese in Long Island, N.Y., saying survivors should get as much time as state law allows, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The ruling by Judge Shelley Chapman of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York aligns a crucial deadline for claims against the Diocese of Rockville Centre with the Aug. 14 cutoff date established under New York law. The diocese, which covers nearly all of suburban Long Island, had argued for a May deadline for bankruptcy claims, saying it needed to know how many sexual abuse claims it faced in order to move ahead swiftly with a settlement plan. Judge Chapman sided with an official committee representing sexual abuse survivors, adding that pressures of the pandemic argued for more time to file claims. Hundreds of lawsuits already had been filed when the diocese, the nation’s eighth-largest by the number of baptized Catholics, sought bankruptcy protection in October 2020. In court papers, committee lawyers said “many elderly and vulnerable adults” in the New York area will be weighing whether to file a bankruptcy claim and argued they should get as much time as lawmakers had given them to sue.

Women’s apparel retailer Christopher & Banks Corp. has filed for bankruptcy while taking steps to close all of the company’s roughly 450 stores, the latest U.S. retailer planning to shut down for good over debt issues and pandemic disruptions, Wall Street Journal reported. The Plymouth, Minn.-based specialty retailer filed for chapter 11 protection Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Camden, N.J., with the intention of holding going-out-of-business sales at store locations and finding a buyer for the company’s e-commerce business. The company is the latest victim “of the retail apocalypse that was first created by a customer migration away from brick-and-mortar stores and most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to a sworn declaration filed by President and Chief Executive Keri Jones. The company depended heavily on in-store traffic, which has declined in recent years due to competition from big-box retailers, rising online sales and changing consumer preferences, Ms. Jones said in court papers. As a result, Christopher & Banks has already determined that a sale of its traditional brick-and-mortar business is not achievable. The company said it reached out to about 180 potential investors and buyers but found no takers for all or some of its stores, Ms. Jones said. However, the e-commerce business is an attractive asset for buyers, she said. The retailer, which sells privately branded women’s apparel and accessories, was founded in 1956 as Braun’s Fashions in Minneapolis and was later rebranded as Christopher & Banks in 2000. The company now operates 449 locations in 44 states, including 314 Christopher & Banks’s Missy, Petite, Women stores, 76 outlet locations, 31 Christopher & Banks stores, and 28 stores selling women’s plus sizes, C.J. Banks.

A bankrupt internet retailer is the first borrower under the Paycheck Protection Program to settle civil Justice Department fraud allegations after the company falsely claimed it wasn’t bankrupt on a $350,000 loan application, the Wall Street Journal reported. SlideBelts Inc., an e-commerce company selling apparel and wearable technology, and its chief executive Brigham Taylor agreed to pay $100,000 in damages and penalties to resolve civil fraud allegations, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif. SlideBelts returned the $350,000 loan proceeds in July after multiple requests by the Small Business Administration, which administers the PPP. Under SBA rules, companies under bankruptcy protection aren’t eligible to access the PPP, an enormously popular program of forgivable, government-guaranteed loans designed to keep checks flowing to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The defendants made false statements to multiple banks in order to obtain a [PPP] loan that should have been disbursed to an honest small business suffering financially from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” U.S. attorney McGregor W. Scott said Tuesday. The Justice Department and the SBA will “aggressively pursue those who exploit federal programs intended to help those in need during this national emergency,” he said. As part of the settlement, SlideBelts and Mr. Taylor, who is also the company’s chief financial officer, admitted to making false statements to the three different banks where they submitted PPP applications, prosecutors said.

U.S. oil and gas producer Chesapeake Energy’s chapter 11 reorganization plan was approved by a Bankruptcy Judge David Jones yesterday, giving lenders control of the firm and ending a contentious trial, Reuters reported. Chesapeake will emerge from bankruptcy with about $3 billion in new financing, a $7 billion reduction in debt, and eliminating $1.7 billion in gas processing and pipeline costs, under the plan endorsed by the court. Investors who committed last spring to back the restructuring as energy tumbled stand to benefit enormously. A rebound in oil and gas prices raised Chesapeake’s value to about $5.13 billion, the judge hearing the case said. Once the second-largest U.S. natural gas producer, Chesapeake filed for court protection last June, weighed down by debts from years of overspending on assets and from a sudden decline in energy demand and prices spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.

Wardman Park Hotel was approved to borrow an initial $3 million in bankruptcy to preserve the historic property and find a buyer, despite objections from its former manager Marriott International Inc., Bloomberg News reported. Wardman Hotel Owner LLC, the debtor for the century-old Washington, D.C., hotel, can make an initial draw on its $8 million debtor-in-possession loan while it looks for a buyer for the property, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey ruled in a Delaware court yesterday. Wardman Park received the loan from a unit of Pacific Life Insurance Co., its owner and pre-bankruptcy lender, with a six-month term and 5% annual interest rate, according to filings. Wardman Hotel Owner owed Pacific Life $130.5 million as of Dec. 21, according to court papers. “It’s time to hit the refresh button,” Laura Davis Jones of Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones, an attorney for Wardman Hotel Owner, said in the hotel’s first-day bankruptcy hearing. Selling the Wardman Park is the best way to maximize value for all stakeholders, she said. Wardman Park Hotel, which opened in 1918 at the height of the Spanish Flu pandemic, filed for bankruptcy this week after closing in late March due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The historic hotel is one of the largest in Washington, D.C., and has played host to numerous presidential inaugural balls and been home to former presidents Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, according to court filings. Marriott, which had the contract to manage the hotel until “minutes before” the bankruptcy filing, according to its attorneys, filed a raft of objections to the first-day motions, calling the move “a bad faith bankruptcy.” Marriott alleged in court filings that the Wardman bankruptcy filing is an attempt to avoid paying Marriott claims awarded by a Maryland state court.

Lawyers for the stars and producers of the 2012 film “Silver Linings Playbook” on Wednesday urged a federal appeals court to find the company that purchased The Weinstein Company’s assets out of bankruptcy must honor prior compensation obligations, Reuters reported. The case is one of many in which film and television talent are looking to collect on payments owed under contracts with The Weinstein Company before it filed for bankruptcy in 2018. Though stars like Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro are involved in the lawsuit, Wednesday’s arguments before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals focused on the work-for-hire contract of “Silver Linings” producer Bruce Cohen. 

Imerys SA is pressing ahead in an effort to get out from under lawsuits over its U.S. mining operation, Imerys Talc America Inc., over the protests of health-care company Johnson & Johnson, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Imerys talc-mining business, which supplied talc for Johnson’s Baby Powder, had been hit with lawsuits claiming the product caused cancer. It was placed into chapter 11 protection in 2019 and sold in 2020 for $223 million, with the proceeds earmarked for a trust to pay cancer claims. It is now trying to win court permission to seek creditor approval of its bankruptcy repayment plan. Johnson & Johnson, which has denied liability and is fighting the lawsuits, says Imerys Talc’s bankruptcy is an improper effort to immunize the mining company’s French parent, and make it easier for cancer victims to sue Johnson & Johnson. Imerys Talc is putting sale proceeds, insurance policies and funds from settlements into a trust that will pay claims for cancer. Victims won’t get much from Imerys, court papers say. Under the Imerys Talc plan, some ovarian cancer victims can expect to collect only about 5% of the value that has been assigned to their claim, for example. Johnson & Johnson says the bankruptcy plan allowed cancer victims to set the amount of their damages without opposition, setting a precedent for collecting the rest of the money from Johnson & Johnson.

Studio Movie Grill has filed its plan of reorganization, nearly three months after filing for chapter 11 protection in October due to effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Dallas Business Journal reported. If the bankruptcy court confirms the plan, the company will exit bankruptcy in less than five months, said Frank Wright, Studio Movie Grill's bankruptcy lawyer. While it is waiting on the court to set a date to confirm the plan, the Dallas-based dine-in movie theater chain is also running a sale process to see if an outside bidder is interested in acquiring the company, Studio Movie Grill said on Monday. The plan will provide for a creditors’ trust to manage liquidation of some assets to handle the company’s $50 million of contingent and non-contingent general unsecured debt. The bankruptcy process has forced eventual closure of about one-third of the company’s locations.