The defunct Alliance of American Football has filed for bankruptcy, NBCSports.com reported. The chapter 7 filing lists more than $11 million in assets, and more than $48 million in liabilities. The league also has $536,160.68 in cash. The assets undoubtedly include football equipment that could be auctioned, including official helmets and jerseys. Based on the league’s refusal to release players from their contracts for possible employment by the CFL, the AAF likely has attached a value to those contracts, treating them as among the total assets.
Before it entered bankruptcy, PG&E Corp. paid more than $100 million for professional advice on how to fend off blame for years of deadly wildfires and, when that failed, how to take cover in chapter 11, new court papers show, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Filings on Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco give the most complete view yet of how PG&E deployed its legal budget as criticism mounted over its safety practices. California’s largest utility filed for bankruptcy protection at the end of January, swamped by fire damage claims estimated at $30 billion or more. By that point, PG&E had spent $70 million or more to defend itself and its leaders in investigations, regulatory activity and lawsuits stemming from blazes in 2015, 2017 and 2018. The utility had also spent $30 million on advice about bankruptcy, beginning as early as the spring of 2018. The bankruptcy filing froze action in wildfire and shareholder lawsuits and, according to PG&E, prevented the company from making good on promises to pay about $15 million to settle some of the older lawsuits. Lawyers for wildfire victims have protested repeatedly in federal court hearings that people who lost homes and loved ones in the California wildfires are still living in tents and trailers, waiting for money from PG&E. Most fire victims won’t get paid until the end of a chapter 11 case that PG&E has said could take years. PG&E has said it is working on a hardship fund to get money to some victims soon.
The startup that acquired Harvey Weinstein’s film and TV catalog has a new backer: Warner Bros., Bloomberg News reported. The studio giant is investing in Spyglass Media Group, a venture created by entertainment veteran Gary Barber and Lantern Entertainment, which bought the Weinstein Co. assets out of bankruptcy last year. Warner Bros., owned by AT&T Inc., will have an undisclosed equity stake in Spyglass, as well as a “first-look” arrangement that lets it take first crack at projects. Warner Bros. joins Italian independent distributor Eagle Pictures and Cineworld Group Plc, the second-largest theater chain in the world, in supporting the venture. Spyglass obtained the rights to former Weinstein properties such as “The King’s Speech” and “Inglourious Basterds.” The business will make new films and TV shows, some of which were put on hold because of the Weinstein bankruptcy — a move brought on by sexual-assault claims against the eponymous producer. The company also will distribute a 250-title library that includes Oscar winners such as “The Artist” and television shows like “Project Runway.” Weinstein Co. was sold to Lantern last year in a bankruptcy sale worth about $437 million, including debt. The arrangement means Harvey Weinstein himself won’t profit from the new venture.
California energy company PG&E Corp. said yesterday that it appointed former state and federal regulator Nora Mead Brownell as chair of the company’s board of directors, Reuters reported. The company also appointed former U.S. ambassador Jeffrey Bleich as chair of the board of its subsidiary Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali yesterday deferred a ruling on whether to approve a PG&E Corp plan to pay up to $350 million in bonuses to 10,000 employees, saying that he wants more details from the California power producer that is facing bankruptcy following last year’s wildfires, Reuters reported. Judge Montali set April 23 as the next date for a hearing on the plan, saying that he wants PG&E to give him a “tutorial” on it. “It doesn’t quite feel right yet,” Montali said of the plan, noting that he wanted a better understanding of how some of its performance measures will affect payouts. The plan covers 2019 and takes the place of a previously proposed 2018 bonus program that the California power provider scuttled after criticism from wildfire victims and their lawyers. San Francisco-based PG&E sought chapter 11 protection in January, facing the prospect of potentially billions of dollars in liabilities stemming from wildfires in California in recent years linked or suspected to be linked to its equipment.
Johnson & Johnson won the latest trial over claims its iconic baby powder can cause cancer, as a jury in Long Beach, California, rejected a lawsuit brought by a 65-year-old retired teacher who claimed the product was contaminated with asbestos, Bloomberg News reported. The J&J victory on Friday comes the week after the company settled three cases alleging baby powder caused a rare asbestos-connected cancer. Two, in Oklahoma and California, were settled during trial. The other, in New York, was settled less than two weeks before trial was set to begin. Plaintiff Robert Blinkinsop was diagnosed in July 2017 with mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the lining of the lung generally caused by asbestos exposure. Blinkinsop used Johnson’s baby powder daily for personal hygiene from 1977 to 1994 and on his children from 1992 to 1996, his attorney, Mark Bratt, said at trial. He also used the company’s Shower to Shower talc product. J&J is facing more than 13,000 lawsuits linking baby powder and another talc product, Shower to Shower, to ovarian cancer or mesothelioma. More than two dozen trials have been scheduled in U.S. courts in 2019.
Oklahoma’s attorney general on Thursday had dropped all but a single claim against Johnson & Johnson and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd in a closely watched lawsuit alleging the drugmakers helped fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic, Reuters reported. The move by Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter came ahead of an upcoming May 28 trial, the first in the U.S. to result from roughly 2,000 lawsuits seeking to hold manufacturers of painkillers responsible for contributing to the epidemic. Opioids were involved in a record 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017 in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hunter dropped the claims after announcing last week that OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP had along with the wealthy Sackler family who own it reached a $270 million settlement. The 2017 lawsuit accused the three companies of engaging in deceptive marketing that downplayed the addiction risk from opioids while overstating their benefits. The Sacklers were not defendants in the case. The companies deny wrongdoing. Hunter said he would continue to bring a public nuisance claim against J&J and Teva but was dropping five other claims, including that they violated the Oklahoma Medicaid False Claims Act.
California energy company PG&E Corp. yesterday named William Johnson as Chief Executive Officer and president, and said it would appoint 10 new directors to its board as it navigates through bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Johnson has been the CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority since 2013. PG&E said seven current board directors were stepping down. The company faces crushing liabilities related to deadly wildfires in 2017 and 2018 that killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes.
A U.S. judge said yesterday that PG&E Corp cannot resume dividends and must use the money to reduce wildfire risk in California, stopping short of more costly measures he proposed earlier this year, Reuters reported. The new criminal probation terms for PG&E are modest compared with ones the judge had in mind in January and that PG&E said could have cost upwards of $150 billion. The terms will, however, keep PG&E under the supervision of Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and hold the company, which also is in chapter 11 bankruptcy, to its target for clearing areas around its power lines of some 375,000 trees this year. PG&E’s probation stems from its felony conviction after a deadly 2010 natural gas pipeline blast in San Bruno, California, near San Francisco, that killed eight people and injured 58 others. PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection on Jan. 29 in anticipation of liabilities from wildfires, including a catastrophic 2018 blaze, the Camp Fire. It killed 86 people in the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. At a January hearing, Judge Alsup, who is overseeing PG&E’s probation, said that he felt compelled to propose additional probation terms in the aftermath of the Camp Fire. San Francisco-based PG&E expects its equipment will be found to have caused the blaze. The probation process is separate from San Francisco-based PG&E’s bankruptcy. Read more.
In related news, four outside law firms have billed Pacific Gas and Electric Co. at least $84 million for legal services related to the company’s January bankruptcy filing, the Recorder reported. The utility company disclosed its legal spend in a series of court filings last month, as it sought approval from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali to continue employing the law firms. PG&E is seeking to retain Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Weil, Gotshal & Manges; Jenner & Block; and Keller & Benvenutti as its legal advisers for the Chapter 11 proceedings. PG&E listed more than $50 billion in estimated liabilities when it filed for chapter 11 protection. According to the court docket, Montali is scheduled to consider PG&E and the firms’ motions at a hearing April 9. Read more.
Religious orders once associated with a now-shuttered Catholic boarding school for Native Americans are being accused of failing to protect students from sexual abuse by clergy and faculty, the Associated Press reported. An Ohio-based order of Franciscan Friars and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, headquartered in Pennsylvania, are named as defendants in a lawsuit filed this week in a New Mexico court by a team of lawyers that has represented dozens of abuse survivors over the years. The accusations center on a student who attended St. Catherine's Indian School in Santa Fe during the 1980s, but attorneys for the unnamed plaintiff say that the case speaks to broader issues. The case comes as the Catholic church wrestles with a sex abuse and cover-up scandal that has spanned the globe. New Mexico's largest diocese is among the religious organizations seeking bankruptcy protection as a result, having spent more than $50 million over the years to settle hundreds of lawsuits.
