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Oil and gas companies with names like Nowitzki, Teixeira, Modano and Woodson filed for bankruptcy on May 15, the Dallas Business Journal reported today. In all, a dozen Fort Worth, Texas-based oil and gas companies filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The names are references to Dallas Maverick Dirk Nowitzki, New York Yankee Mark Teixeira (a former Texas Ranger), former Dallas Stars player Mike Modano and former Dallas Cowboy Darren Woodson. Several other companies named after professional athletes also are listed. “They’re totally unrelated to the athletes,” said John Bonds, an attorney who is representing the companies in bankruptcy. Read more.

For further analysis of oil and gas company bankruptcy proceedings, be sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy.

MF Global Holdings Ltd. investors are seeking final approval of a $74 million settlement stemming from their lawsuit against several well-known financial institutions, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In a Friday filing with U.S. District Court in Manhattan, lawyers for the plaintiffs urged a judge to approve the settlement, calling it "very favorable in light of the risks of continued litigation." The institutions, including units of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc., served as underwriters for the sale of MF Global's stocks and bonds before its collapse. The deal, which has already received preliminary approval, "dismisses and releases" all claims against them. The investors, now led by Virginia Retirement System, sued the financial institutions as part of a larger 2011 suit against former MF Global Chief Executive Jon S. Corzine and other company executives, accusing the parties of not disclosing the risks associated with MF Global's European sovereign debt trades using repurchase-to-maturity transactions.

Timing is everything for creditors appealing the start date of the bankruptcy filing for Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s operating company in hopes of unlocking $468 million in value, Reuters reported yesterday. Caesars' unsecured creditors' committee yesterday asked a federal judge to review an April 29 ruling that Caesars is not obligated to consent to a forced bankruptcy case filed by creditors on Jan. 12. Caesars voluntarily filed for chapter 11 protection three days later, on Jan. 15. The unsecured creditors separately asked Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar to force Caesars to consent to the Jan. 12 case because they say Caesars might have cost them money by waiting. Caesars in October granted certain stakeholders a lien on as much as $468 million in cash to earn their support for its proposed restructuring. It waited until Jan. 15 to file for bankruptcy so the lien would be outside a statutory 90-day window to challenge certain pre-bankruptcy payments, the unsecured creditors argue. The unsecured creditors want to bring the case back within that window by enforcing the Jan. 12 filing, as invalidating the lien would free up the money for other creditors.

San Bernardino's council yesterday approved a bankruptcy exit plan that seeks to virtually eliminate the southern California city's pension bond debt while paying Calpers, the state pension system, in full, Reuters reported today. The city council voted 6-1 for the plan after a debate which included input from residents. The bankruptcy blueprint, called a plan of adjustment, must now be presented to the federal judge overseeing the city's bankruptcy by May 30, under a court-imposed deadline. Under the plan, city officials want to slash their $50 million pension debt to just a penny on the dollar. The city previously agreed to pay CalPERS, its biggest creditor, in full now and at all times in the future, an agreement incorporated into the plan.

While shareholders are at the bottom of the pile in a corporate bankruptcy, it has been surprising to see that they have been gaining attention in a couple of important ways in recent weeks, according to a commentary by Prof. Stephen Lubben in the New York Times DealBook blog on Friday. First, in a recent opinion, Bankruptcy Judge Christopher S. Sontchi recently ruled in In re SS Body Armor I Inc. that shareholders retain their right to call a shareholders meeting to elect a new board in a bankruptcy case. Under Delaware law, a corporation is supposed to hold an annual meeting every year, but there is not really any consequence for failing to do so if nobody complains, according to Prof. Lubben. Because shareholders are routinely “out of the money” in chapter 11 cases, and as shareholders in the U.S. tend to be a dispersed lot, there is often little likelihood that they will complain too much about the lack of a meeting. The second development is a study by Diane Lourdes Dick at Seattle University School of Law that traces the real challenges shareholders face in getting an equity committee appointed or being taken seriously in general. Taken together, Prof. Lubben raises the idea that these developments might be part of an emerging new consideration of shareholders in corporate bankruptcy.

Lawyers for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and creditors in its bankruptcy have postponed until June a decision about whether to seek mediation in a lawsuit over the estimated $66 million it holds in a trust to care for its cemeteries, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. At a brief hearing yesterday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman offered to mediate the lawsuit or find a retired magistrate to do so. James Stang, attorney for the creditors committee, which is composed of clergy sex abuse victims but represents all creditors, said he was open to Adelman's offer. But archdiocese attorney Frank LoCoco suggested the parties remain too far apart for negotiations to be successful. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2011 to address its sexual abuse liabilities dating back decades. Adelman scheduled a June 16 hearing to pose the mediation question again.

A bankruptcy judge last week gave the parishes of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis a greater voice as creditors in the archdiocese's bankruptcy case, a development that is "troubling" to victims of alleged clergy sexual abuse and their advocates, who say that the judge's ruling effectively gives the archdiocese a place on both sides of the bargaining table, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel signed off on an order that gives the archdiocese's 187 parishes increased representation in their bid to reach a settlement with alleged victims through a separate, parish-only creditors' committee, one with equal standing to the current creditor's committee made up of alleged victims. Though parishes have banded together in past diocesan bankruptcies to facilitate negotiations with abuse victims, never before have they been allowed to form their own creditor's committee, lawyers familiar with the bankruptcies say.

The interests of former students of defunct Corinthian Colleges Inc. who could potentially have billions of dollars in claims against the for-profit educator are getting an official voice in company’s bankruptcy case, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Formation will begin today for an official committee to represent students, according to the Office of the U.S. Trustee. The representation will give students a seat at the table as Corinthian’s assets are divided and could provide a forum for negotiating with the U.S. Department of Education, according to Scott F. Gautier, the lawyer who requested the committee, said that he hopes that students, alongside other creditors in the case, can negotiate a recovery for students from what remains of Corinthian’s assets and reach a settlement on other student issues, including possibly a deal to reduce student debt.

LightSquared Inc.’s bankruptcy plan gives hedge funds that invested in the broadband company a leg up while blocking telecommunications firms from competing with it, a fund owned by Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charles Ergen said in court papers appealing the plan, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. LightSquared’s reorganization was drafted by “sophisticated hedge funds that have taken a commercial bet that the spectrum owned by LightSquared might one day be usable and therefore worth many billions of dollars,” Ergen’s fund said in its filing on Monday. The fund, SP Special Opportunities LLC, is challenging specific wording in the plan that bars creditors from taking actions that could impede LightSquared’s ability to get a license for the use of its airwaves.

Patriot Coal Corp. joined at least a half-dozen other mining companies in bankruptcy court, filing for protection for the second time in less than three years amid a slump in the price of the commodity, Bloomberg News reported today. The company listed assets and liabilities of more than $1 billion each in court filings yesterday in Richmond, Virginia. The company said that it’s engaged in negotiations for the sale of substantially all of its operating assets to a strategic partner. A group of secured creditors have committed to providing $100 million in financing during the bankruptcy, Patriot Coal said. Shipments and mining will continue as usual. The company emerged from bankruptcy in December 2013, slashing its debt to $545 million from $3.07 billion by selling assets and closing some mines.