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California power regulators unexpectedly delayed a key vote yesterday on Pacific Gas and Electric’s plan for getting out of bankruptcy after saying one of the utility’s most outspoken critics sent an improper email attacking the company’s proposal to pay wildfire victims, the Associated Press reported. California Public Utilities Commission President Marybel Batjer was irked by the need to postpone the vote because of the email sent Tuesday by Will Abrams, a survivor of a 2017 wildfire that tore through his Santa Rosa hometown. The communication came during a mandated quiet period from May 15 through Thursday involving the vote on PG&E’s $58 billion plan for ending its nearly year-and-a-half-old bankruptcy. The vote was delayed until May 28, which coincides with a federal bankruptcy court trial on the plan. State power regulators and a U.S. bankruptcy judge must approve PG&E’s plans by June 30 for the company to qualify for coverage from California’s wildfire insurance fund. PG&E should still be able to meet that deadline. In the email, Abrams reiterated objections to PG&E’s plan filed with the bankruptcy court by a committee that represents wildfire victims about their growing doubts the utility will be able to pay $13.5 billion it has pledged to a fund for the fire victims. Batjer delayed the vote so PG&E and other parties could respond to Abrams’ email. Another quiet period will start Friday and continue through May 28. Batjer warned of “serious consequences,” including potential fines, for any other violations.

Model and social-media influencer Kendall Jenner has agreed to pay $90,000 to settle a lawsuit over an Instagram post promoting Fyre Festival, the 2017 music event whose collapse went viral online, spawned two documentaries and resulted in prison for the organizer, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The since-deleted Instagram post was the subject of a 2019 lawsuit brought by a bankruptcy trustee who is recovering money for Fyre Festival creditors who lost money in the event. Artists including Migos, Pusha T, Blink-182 and Lil Yachty who were booked but never performed at the event were also sued to recover money paid by festival organizer William “Billy” McFarland. Terms of the settlement were described in papers filed Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Jenner, who has 129 million Instagram followers, was allegedly paid $250,000 for the Instagram post promoting the event and was paid an additional $25,000 days later by McFarland’s Fyre Media Inc., according to the lawsuit brought by bankruptcy trustee Gregory Messer. The settlement was reached after Jenner and the trustee agreed to mediation late last year.

Johnson & Johnson announced yesterday that it would stop selling its talc Baby Powder in the U.S. and Canada, saying demand had dropped in the wake of what it called “misinformation” about the product’s safety amid a barrage of legal challenges, Reuters reported. J&J faces more than 19,000 lawsuits from consumers and their survivors claiming its talc products caused cancer due to contamination with asbestos, a known carcinogen. Many are pending before a U.S. district judge in New Jersey. J&J has faced intense scrutiny of the safety of its baby powder following an investigative report by Reuters in 2018 that found the company knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its talc. Internal company records, trial testimony and other evidence show that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos.

PG&E Corp. said that it survived attempts to rally wildfire victims against a $13.5 billion settlement offer, positioning the bankrupt utility favorably to exit chapter 11 on its preferred terms, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Opponents of PG&E’s bankruptcy exit strategy had spent weeks laying out their concerns, with a particular focus on personal-injury lawyer Mikal Watts, whose firm counts 16,000 fire victims as clients and who was at the bargaining table when PG&E negotiated its proposed settlement. Other wildfire victims accused Watts of harboring a conflict of interest after he received a $100 million loan in which PG&E investors Centerbridge Partners LP and Apollo Global Management Inc. held stakes. The judge presiding over PG&E’s bankruptcy said that he wouldn’t disqualify the votes of Watts’s clients, rebuffing a challenge that could have held up PG&E’s progress in getting out of bankruptcy. PG&E said yesterday that the preliminary voting results “indicate overwhelming acceptance” of the settlement proposal by wildfire victims, with the final, certified results expected later this week. The company is scheduled to return to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco beginning May 27 to seek confirmation of a chapter 11 plan, which clears up an estimated $30 billion worth of liabilities from past wildfires linked to the company’s equipment.

Attorneys have agreed on a November deadline for victims of child sex abuse to file claims in the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case, the Associated Press reported. The Nov. 16 date presented to a judge yesterday was worked out after attorneys for the official committee representing abuse victims objected to a proposed Oct. 6 deadline and argued that victims should have at least until Dec. 31. "At a time when millions of Americans are unemployed and preoccupied with basic survival, sexual abuse survivors need and are entitled to a reasonable period of time after they receive notice from the bankruptcy Court to reflect seriously and make a decision whether to file a claim in this case," attorneys for the victims committee wrote in a court filing. After filing for bankruptcy, the Boy Scouts initially proposed a deadline of 80 days after notice of the claims process was published, drawing immediate opposition from attorneys for abuse victims. The Boy Scouts later proposed the October deadline. They argued that it allowed more time than in many Catholic diocese bankruptcy cases, and that it provided sufficient time to conduct a nationwide program of print, television, radio and online notices and allow claimants to submit claim forms.

The judge overseeing PG&E Corp.’s bankruptcy rejected an effort by dissident fire victims to upend voting on the California utility’s reorganization plan, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali said that during a hearing on Friday that he planned to deny a motions asking to throw out votes on the company’s chapter 11 plan cast by families and businesses who lost homes, property and loved ones in the blazes. Some fire victims who want to change the payout deal claimed a lawyer representing the largest group of fire victims has a potential conflict of interest that has tainted the six-week voting process, scheduled to end Friday. The judge will consider the results of the creditor votes when deciding whether to approve PG&E’s plan to reorganize, which includes a $13.5 billion payment to about 80,000 residents and businesses harmed by Northern California wildfires. Lawyers representing thousands of people who have claims against PG&E have been lobbying their clients to vote in favor of the reorganization proposal. A dissident group of victims, including a former member of the official fire victim’s committee that helped negotiate the $13.5 billion deal, asked the judge to throw out thousands of votes cast by clients of Watts, alleging he has a possible conflict because his law firm received a loan that was backed in part by two major PG&E investors.

France-based Imerys SA is offering to sell a bankrupt North American unit that was historically a major supplier of talc to Johnson & Johnson in an effort to escape litigation linking its products to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Only a few product-liability lawsuits had been filed against the U.S. business in 2011 when it was acquired by Imerys, but by the time the unit filed for bankruptcy last year, Imerys Talc America Inc. was swamped by roughly 13,800 claims tied to ovarian cancer and 850 related to mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer. Imerys Talc America had supplied talc to Johnson & Johnson, the prime target of this litigation. Johnson & Johnson has said that its products are safe and not contaminated, and has offered to defend Imerys Talc America in the lawsuits where both companies are named as defendants. Court documents don’t put a dollar figure on Imerys’s potential liabilities or on the combined value of the assets to be assigned to the bankruptcy trust for Imerys Talc America.

PG&E Corp. is asking a court to halt a recent round of probation requirements, saying that they are “more likely to undermine wildfire safety than they are to promote it,” Bloomberg News reported. The company is challenging four new requirements laid out by a judge on April 29, including that the company employ its own inspectors for vegetation management, that it identify the age of equipment on every transmission tower and line and that it ensure its inspection contractors carry enough insurance in case a fire erupts. The requirements interfere with actions from the state legislature and regulator, known as the CPUC, to address the same issues, the San Francisco-based company said in a court filing on Wednesday. To meet the new conditions, PG&E said that it “will be forced to divert significant resources from its CPUC-approved Wildfire Safety Plan to satisfy the Court’s conditions, with no evidence that those conditions will enhance safety and a risk that they may well decrease it.” California’s largest utility is on probation after it was convicted in 2016 of gas-pipeline safety crimes. Judge William Alsup has pushed the company to prevent its equipment from causing another devastating wildfire, as happened in 2017. PG&E is working through probation as it simultaneously navigates a complicated exit from bankruptcy.

French manufacturing and minerals group Imerys SA, whose North America talc unit filed for bankruptcy after being drawn into cancer lawsuits, said today that it had reached an agreement to resolve those talc-related liabilities, Reuters reported. Imerys said that the group’s contribution to the plan to resolve the issue would consist of a minimum cash payment of $75 million, and a further amount of up to $102.5 million subject to a reduction mechanism proportionate to the sale price for the assets of its North American talc subsidiaries. Imerys said the agreement had been filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court in the District of Delaware and was expected to lead to a sale of the assets of its North America talc subsidiaries. Imerys’ North America talc division filed for bankruptcy after being drawn into cancer lawsuits connected to Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge heard arguments yesterday over whether a prominent lawyer for victims of fires blamed on PG&E Corp. has a potential conflict of interest in the case that taints the voting of thousands of claimants on the power company’s reorganization plan, Bloomberg News reported. A fire survivor and an attorney who represents a former member of the committee for victims in the bankruptcy argued that lawyer Mikal Watts had a possible conflict after disclosing that two PG&E investors had bought stakes in a $100 million line of credit provided to his law firm, Watts Guerra LLP. Attorney Steven Kane asked the court to require Watts to disclose the potential conflict in writing to his more than 16,000 clients and obtain waivers from them. Watts said that the investments by Centerbridge Partners LP and Apollo Management didn’t constitute a conflict of interest and that he had disclosed their involvement in his loan to his clients on multiple occasions including during town hall meetings in December, April and May. Watts said that Centerbridge and Apollo were “bit” players in the bankruptcy negotiations and their representatives introduced him to the principal negotiators in the case.