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Bankruptcy Judge Patrick Flatley granted the outright dismissal of the chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on Tuesday by the West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation and its HT Foundation, WVNews.com reported. The judge ruled after hearing no objections from creditors or the U.S. trustee in the case. The next step for the Consortium/Foundation is to sell two parcels from its Fairmont property, which will be enough to pay off its creditors, either in full or in amounts to which they’ve agreed, according to debtors’ attorney David Salzman. The debt was around $20 million at the beginning of the case. Terms of the settlement, or names of the purchaser(s), won’t be disclosed due to the outright dismissal of the case from the bankruptcy court.

Two months into bankruptcy, the Woodbridge Group of Cos. is on its third board of managers, second chief restructuring officer, second lead law firm and has undertaken to support three investor committees and an assortment of advisers, according to a WSJ Pro Bankruptcy commentary. For bankruptcy professionals, the company at the center of an alleged $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme is the “land of milk and honey,” in the words of one of the lawyers at a Monday hearing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Before it starts paying investors, Woodbridge has work to do on a real-estate portfolio that it has estimated is worth upwards of $600 million. So far, the company has managed to win court approval to sell an unbuildable plot of land in Los Angeles. Woodbridge purchased the land in 2014 for $1.4 million and is selling it for $1.5 million. Sale documents don’t say how much the land absorbed in the way of fees and carrying costs before Woodbridge arrived at the conclusion it wasn’t really a suitable site for a luxury home.

Jonathan Eilian’s JD Holdings LLC has reached a deal with the estate of a late Missouri hotelier that paves the way for the real-estate investor to acquire a hotel portfolio valued at about $1 billion that had been tied up in legal disputes for nearly a decade, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The settlement, filed on Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Kansas City, Kans., calls for Eilian’s investment company to acquire 35 hotels controlled by John Q. Hammons Hotels & Resorts while paying all allowed creditors claims in full and keeping the majority of the hotels’ 4,000 employees on the job. The deal, which forms the basis of a chapter 11 exit plan, also calls for the creation of a charitable trust, funded with $20 million, to honor the legacy of John Q. Hammons, the late hotelier, who developed more than 100 hotels during his lifetime.

A Denver-based company has emerged as the winning bidder for the Boston Herald that filed for bankruptcy in December, the Associated Press reported. Digital First Media's $11.9 million bid beat two other bidders for the Boston Herald in a five-hour bankruptcy auction held on Tuesday. The bid needs approval from a bankruptcy court judge, and a hearing is scheduled for tomorrow. Digital First owns hundreds of publications, including the Lowell Sun and Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg, Mass. The Boston HeraldBoston Herald publisher Patrick Purcell previously cited declining revenue, digital media and growing competition in the decision to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Accessories retailer Charming Charlie LLC won court approval to put its bankruptcy reorganization plan to a creditor vote following negotiations that led to a settlement with unsecured creditors, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi yesterday approved moving forward with the plan. The mall-based retailer sought chapter 11 protection in December after months of “flying the plane way too close to the ground,” one of the company’s attorneys previously said in regards to Charming Charlie’s dwindling cash balance. Like many other retailers that sought bankruptcy protection in 2017, Charming Charlie has blamed its financial woes on the major challenges facing the overall industry — namely the consumer shift to online shopping.

A group of 13 automakers will contribute as much as $130 million to compensate those injured by faulty Takata Corp air bag inflators as part of a deal to resolve the Japanese company’s bankruptcy, Reuters reported. The agreement clears the way for the sale of Takata’s non-inflator business to Key Safety Systems, a unit of China’s Ningo Joyson Electric Corp, for $1.6 billion, helping to ensure a steady supply of car parts for the world’s biggest automakers. Takata and its U.S. unit, TK Holdings Inc., filed for bankruptcy last year in the wake of the world’s largest automotive safety recall, triggered by air bag inflators that can explode with excessive force, unleashing metal shrapnel inside cars and trucks. Attorney Joe Rice of Motley Rice, who represents dozens of personal injury plaintiffs in the bankruptcy, said the deal, which was disclosed in court papers on Saturday, was aimed at keeping Takata operations afloat so it could make replacement inflator kits. Tens of millions of air bags with the inflators have been recalled but not yet replaced.

The battle between U.S. farm interests and oil-refining advocates such as Carl Icahn is heating up again as the two sides fight over whether the ethanol mandate is to blame for the bankruptcy of the U.S. East Coast’s largest refinery, Bloomberg News reported. Philadelphia Energy Solutions LLC blamed its woes on the cost of complying with the Renewable Fuel Standard when it filed for bankruptcy last month. The refiner said that the biofuel mandate cost it more than $800 million since 2012, and now the industry is seizing on that as fresh evidence that changes to the regulation are urgently needed. The ethanol industry says that the program is working as intended by forcing refiners to invest in infrastructure to comply with the law — a regulation that benefits the sector by making biofuels more widely available. Both sides have circulated memos, including one written by Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) energy policy staff, as well as analysis to buttress their arguments. While oil interests largely blame the RFS, biofuel proponents say that PES is harmed more by losing affordable access to cheap domestic crude from North Dakota than it is by the biofuel mandate that applies to refineries nationwide.