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The National Rifle Association has agreed to allow the New York Attorney General’s office question a board member about the gun rights organization’s decision to seek chapter 11 protection, Reuters reported. NRA attorney Gregory Garman of Garman Turner Gordon told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin Hale during a remote hearing yesterday that the organization has agreed to set a date for a deposition of Judge Phillip Journey, an NRA board member who is a Kansas state judge. The agreement came two weeks before a trial over the attorney general’s motion to dismiss the chapter 11 case is scheduled to begin.

The Texas grid operator has held talks with financial institutions including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. about potential financing options to address a more than $3 billion shortfall in electricity payments as some market participants balk at paying their share, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has held preliminary discussions with investment bankers from Goldman Sachs about measures, such as a potential credit facility, that would cover amounts that electricity buyers haven’t paid for after last month’s energy crisis. Ercot, which acts as the payment clearinghouse for electricity buyers and sellers, has issued large bills for power purchased as a winter freeze swept the state, spiking energy prices. Some municipal utilities, electric cooperatives and electricity retailers have disputed the bills, while others have declared bankruptcy or signaled they might seek court protection. Ercot said Thursday that it was short nearly $3.1 billion in required payments, having previously said it was short $2.1 billion. On Friday, San Antonio’s public power utility CPS Energy filed a lawsuit against Ercot, seeking to prevent the grid operator from trying to recoup from CPS the costs that other energy retailers haven’t paid.

The trust distributing payments to PG&E Corp. wildfire victims is set to release another multimillion-dollar round of funds. The Fire Victim Trust said Friday that it will make begin making payments on Monday representing a 30% share of each verified claim, the Sacramento Bee reported. So far, however, only a small fraction of the claims filed by more than 71,000 homeowners and businesses have been verified, and trust Administrator Cathy Yanni said about $30 million will go out the door Monday. The deadline for filing claims was in late February. But the volume of claim verifications will grow substantially, and this round of payouts will be “certainly in the hundreds of millions,” Yanni said. The payments will likely take months, she said. These 30% payments are different than a series of preliminary payments the trust began making last November. Those payments, capped at $25,000 apiece, total $80 million so far, Yanni said. Ultimately, the trust has been set up to disburse $13.5 billion that PG&E agreed to pay, mainly to victims of the 2017 wine country fires and the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed most of Paradise. Victims of the 2015 Butte Fire also are eligible.

People looking to file a claim seeking damages for clergy sex abuse against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse must do so by midnight on April 15, Syracuse.com reported. The diocese issued a reminder of that deadline, known as the “bar date,” in a news release Sunday. The deadline was initially set in November 2020 by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Margaret Cangilos- Ruiz. The diocese filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Northern District of New York in June 2020. That move immediately shifted all abuse claims from state court to bankruptcy court. At the time, there were more than 100 claims of abuse against the Syracuse diocese. The bankruptcy filing came just days after 38 people filed Child Victims Act lawsuits against the church. Under the judge’s order, those with claims must file them by April 15 or risk losing their rights as potential creditors to vote in the diocese’s financial reorganization and any shares in the settlement made to victims.

Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma LP have offered roughly $4.3 billion to resolve sprawling opioid litigation, up from $3 billion initially proposed in settlement discussions underway in the OxyContin maker’s bankruptcy proceedings, Reuters reported. Sackler family members are now willing to contribute $4.275 billion to help settle about 3,000 lawsuits brought by U.S. communities seeking to hold them and Purdue responsible for damage wrought by the opioid epidemic. Details of a far-reaching settlement could be outlined in a Purdue reorganization plan filed in a U.S. bankruptcy court next week. Purdue filed for bankruptcy in 2019 facing on onslaught of opioid litigation. In November, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company pleaded guilty to three felonies arising from its marketing of prescription opioid painkillers. A previous proposed settlement that Purdue values at more than $10 billion guaranteed $3 billion from the Sacklers over seven years, with additional funds from family members contingent on sales of other international businesses they own. That offer as a practical matter decreased to $2.775 billion after the Sacklers agreed to pay $225 million to settle a Justice Department civil probe. Under terms of the latest proposal, the Sacklers could still use proceeds from sales of those businesses to cover the higher $4.275 billion payout, but would need to make good on it regardless. It is not clear how long the Sacklers would take to pay the proposed higher amount, but it would likely be a period of years.

Roughly 400 people who allege that they were sexually preyed upon by local priests and deacons went to bankruptcy court and sought compensation from the Archdiocese of New Orleans before last week’s deadline for victims of clerical abuse to file such claims, church officials said yesterday, NOLA.com reported. The announcement provides clarity as to the number and potential value of remaining clerical abuse cases that the archdiocese will have to settle or litigate before it can reorganize its finances, a process that started when the church filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy last May. March 1 was the final day a sexual abuse claim could be filed in the case, which is the only avenue for compensation for those claiming they were molested prior to the bankruptcy filing. Whoever had such claims but didn’t pursue compensation by the deadline has forever lost the right to do so. Plaintiffs’ attorney Jeff Anderson, who has represented abuse claimants against virtually all of the 27 U.S. Catholic dioceses that have declared bankruptcy, said he believes 400 claims is relatively low for the church in New Orleans, given that the archdiocese serves about a half-million parishioners and currently has a list of more than 70 clergy who have been credibly accused of sexually molesting children or vulnerable adults. For the sake of comparison, the Diocese of Buffalo filed for bankruptcy last February and the court has given claimants until August of this year to file, eight months more than New Orleans claimants received. The Buffalo diocese, which serves about 700,000 Catholics, estimates it will end up receiving 400 abuse claims, but it’s impossible to know if that will prove anywhere near accurate.

Texas lawmakers yesterday found themselves on the horns of a power market dilemma: expect lawsuits from utilities and traders if they retroactively cut cold-snap electricity prices, or “cascading bankruptcies” if they do not, Reuters reported. The state’s grid operator sharply hiked power prices during a February freeze, pushing two power companies into bankruptcy and prompting others to default on bills. Officials this week called for regulator Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas to immediately reduce about $16 billion in power prices. But PUC Chairman Arthur D’Andrea told lawmakers at a hearing in Austin that any repricing would trigger lawsuits the state could lose. Commodity contracts used to hedge power have closed and any repricing “will have consequences” for the state’s power, agriculture and other markets, he said. The state independent market adviser testified the PUC can cut spot market prices over the final hours of the crisis and claw back fees for services not provided. The two would eliminate $5.1 billion in costs from those most affected, said adviser Carrie Bivens. The $16 billion figure was the potential cost of all power sold at a $9,000 per megawatt hour spot price that officials set to induce more generation. However on Thursday, she said the money that changed hands at the high price was much less because some companies had fixed-price contracts or both supply and purchase power.

The chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas huddled with Bank of America utility analysts on Tuesday as pressure mounted on him to reverse about $16 billion in emergency power pricing that would hurt power plant operators, Reuters reported. The meeting came two days before PUC Chairman Arthur D’Andrea was due to rule on rescinding billions of dollars in charges levied on electricity marketers. If he reverses those charges, it would help retail marketers and hurt traders and power generators that stand to collect the money. The state’s power grid operator raised power prices sharply during a February freeze to induce more power during a blackout. However, prices were left at about 450 times their usual level long after the emergency passed, moves that benefited traders and generators. Bank of America has market analysis and power and gas trading arms deeply tied to the Texas crisis. Securities analysts on the call with D’Andrea give investors advice in whether to purchase securities in publicly traded utilities that could lose from any repricing.

Energy retailer Just Energy Group Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and Canada on Tuesday, hit with massive bills from the Texas energy crisis as the financial fallout spreads after last month’s dramatic spike in power prices, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Toronto-based Just Energy said it had received roughly $250 million in bills from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which has issued large invoices to other municipal electric companies, energy cooperatives and power retailers in the aftermath of the Texas blackouts. Just Energy filed for protection in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston on Tuesday with an agreement to borrow $125 million in emergency financing from top investor Pacific Investment Management Co. The company said it wouldn’t be able to pay amounts due to Ercot, the state’s power grid operator, without that loan package, including more than $96 million coming due on Tuesday. The bankruptcy filings “enable Just Energy to continue all operations without interruption throughout the U.S. and Canada and to continue making payments required by Ercot and satisfy other regulatory obligations,” the company said. Just Energy marks the second major bankruptcy among Texas energy players stemming from last month’s electricity crisis after Brazos Electric Power Cooperative Inc., the state’s largest electric-power cooperative, filed for chapter 11 last week.

The committee representing child sex abuse survivors in the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case has agreed to the extension of an injunction halting lawsuits against local Boy Scouts councils and sponsoring organizations, the Associated Press reported. In return for the extension, the BSA and local councils must provide the committee with information about local troop rosters that can help victims validate their claims, according to a court filing submitted on Monday. Attorneys for one of the BSA’s insurers argued in a court filing yesterday that the BSA is legally entitled to the injunction, and that the court should not grant any of the conditions it contains. The insurers argue that the arrangement regarding roster information would potentially reveal private information without the consent of local councils and sponsoring organizations. The current injunction expires March 19. A hearing on the proposed extension is scheduled for March 17.