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Two hours before church sex abuse victims on a court-appointed committee were scheduled to address Archbishop Gregory Aymond in bankruptcy court, a federal judge put a stop to it and removed four of the six victims from the panel, NOLA.com reported. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill said in her order that she was forced to remove them because one of their attorneys, Richard Trahant, had allegedly disclosed “highly confidential information” in violation of her previous orders. That leaves only two members remaining on a committee representing about 450 alleged victims of sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ two-year-old bankruptcy case. The committee was going to court Tuesday to begin mediation, a process to decide how much money the archdiocese owes its creditors. Victims of sexual abuse by clergy were prepared to argue the church owes them damages for allegedly allowing abuse to happen and covering it up.

More than 90 women and girls, including the star gymnasts who raised concerns about Larry Nassar in 2015 that were disregarded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, filed administrative tort claims against the agency on Wednesday collectively seeking $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. The claimants include Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, Maggie Nichols and Aly Raisman, the elite gymnasts who were first identified in the summer of 2015 as having been sexually abused by the then-doctor to the national women’s gymnastics team under the guise of medical treatment. They are among a group of around 90 women and girls filing claims, their lawyers said. The group also includes dozens of Nassar patients sexually assaulted by him for more than a year after the FBI was alerted to the gymnasts’ concerns, their lawyers said. The claims draw on a report released by the Justice Department’s inspector general last year that was sharply critical of the FBI. The report found that FBI agents in Indianapolis — who received an initial visit from USA Gymnastics to report Nassar on July 28, 2015 — didn’t take the claims seriously, document the evidence they received or transfer the allegations to the FBI’s resident agency in Lansing, Mich. The report also found the agents later made false statements to cover their mistakes. Nassar continued to see patients for almost 14 months after USA Gymnastics went to the FBI. He was publicly accused of assault in the fall of 2016, and by early 2018 had been sentenced to an effective life sentence in prison on sexual abuse and child-pornography charges.

Bankrupt pharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt Plc will seek expedited approval to raise $650 million in debt to finance its exit from chapter 11, replacing a $900 million loan that fell through amid market volatility, Reuters reported. Mallinckrodt's reorganization plan was approved in February in Delaware bankruptcy court, but the company remains in chapter 11 as it finalizes agreements and works to secure exit funding. Anupama Yerramalli, an attorney for Mallinckrodt from Latham & Watkins, said in court on Monday that the company will seek approval for the new exit financing on Wednesday. The new exit financing will be funded largely by the company's existing bondholders after the earlier-planned loan failed to generate sufficient market interest from debt investors. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey said that he would consider the request, but would give other parties time to object to the fast-track schedule before Wednesday. Andrew Rosenberg of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, an attorney for bondholders who will provide additional financing, urged the court to move quickly, given the volatile market conditions that disrupted the initial $900 million loan and could still imperil the new financing. Mallinckrodt did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its exit from chapter 11. The Ireland-based company makes generic drugs, including opioids, and branded drugs including Acthar Gel, which is used to treat multiple sclerosis and infantile spasms. It filed for chapter 11 protection in 2020 in the face of opioid-related lawsuits and a court battle over Medicaid rebates for Acthar, its top-selling drug. The company's reorganization plan includes a $1.7 billion settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits accusing it of deceptively marketing its opioids. The plan allows Mallinckrodt to reduce $5.3 billion in debt by $1.3 billion and hands control of the reorganized company to creditors.

The father of a 10-year-old girl slain in the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting and a school employee have taken initial steps that could lead to lawsuits against Daniel Defense, the maker of the semiautomatic rifle used in last week's massacre that killed 21 people, Reuters reported. Lawyers for Alfred Garza, father of Robb Elementary School student Amerie Jo Garza, requested in a letter on Friday that Daniel Defense provide information about its marketing to teens and children. "We ask you to begin providing information to us now, rather than force Mr. Garza to file a lawsuit to obtain it," said the letter. No lawsuits have yet been announced against Daniel Defense stemming from the shooting. In a separate legal action, school employee Emilia Marin filed papers in Texas state court seeking an order to depose Daniel Defense and force the company to turn over documents, also related to its marketing. Marin is listed as a speech pathologist clerk on the school's website. Marin's filing late on Thursday is a petition that allows a party to begin investigating potential claims. Gun manufacturers are generally shielded from lawsuits over criminal use of their firearms by a federal law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA. However, the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that gun company Remington Arms could be sued by families of Sandy Hook victims under a PLCAA exception because the gunmaker Remington allegedly violated state marketing laws.

Infowars is jettisoning its bankruptcy case after families of Sandy Hook school shooting victims who are suing the conspiracy site’s founder, Alex Jones, withdrew from the chapter 11 process, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Properties holding the trademark and web-domain rights to Infowars agreed on Wednesday to dismiss their chapter 11 cases as part of a stipulation with the Justice Department’s bankruptcy watchdog, which has questioned the basis for the bankruptcy. W. Marc Shwartz, a certified public accountant who was retained as Infowars’s chief restructuring officer, determined it was in the best interest of the site and its creditors to end the bankruptcy in light of Sandy Hook families’ decision to effectively withdraw from the chapter 11 process, according to papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Victoria, Texas. The bankruptcy filing threatened the Sandy Hook families with a potentially lengthy delay to their defamation suits against Mr. Jones even though he didn’t file personal bankruptcy. To resume litigation against Mr. Jones, the families agreed last month to drop legal claims against the Infowars properties that were put into chapter 11. The families of the children murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre sued Mr. Jones in 2018 for repeatedly saying the school shooting, which killed 20 first-graders and six adults in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax and falsely claiming the families were actors and faked the deaths of their loved ones. Lawyers representing some families who have sued Mr. Jones have said that the bankruptcy was part of a last-ditch effort to avoid a Texas trial to establish damages against him. A separate damages trial in Connecticut state court is scheduled for September.

The Supreme Court passed on an appeal, raising questions about bankruptcy court jurisdiction arising from a 2013 train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people, Dow Jones Newswires reported. Justices on Tuesday declined to hear a case brought on behalf of victims who have been seeking to revive lawsuits against Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., one of several companies sued in the disaster. Plaintiffs argued that lower courts improperly applied federal bankruptcy rules to their wrongful-death claims instead of ordinary rules of federal civil procedure governing nonbankruptcy disputes. The distinction resulted in lower courts dismissing their claims against Canadian Pacific.

Drugmaker Mallinckrodt PLC has obtained support among unsecured bondholders to fund its exit from chapter 11 after a chilly reception from the leveraged credit market, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Ireland-based company had been struggling to complete a financing deal needed to emerge from bankruptcy and has been working with Morgan Stanley to find investors. A $900 million loan deal failed to gain traction with market participants, partly due to concerns about investing in a company linked to opioid production amid growing market sensitivity about environmental, social and governance issues. Mallinckrodt has since downsized the deal offering to $650 million and shifted its structure into a bond, rather than a loan, in the hopes of finding hedge funds that might have an easier time investing. The company has secured commitments for the deal from a group of existing creditors. The deal struggles follow a broader selloff in the leveraged credit market in recent weeks that has brought junk-rated bonds and loans under pressure, and pushed at least one company, Dayco Products LLC, to pull a refinancing deal. A nearly $3.3 billion bond issued by Carvana Co., the online used-car dealer, with help from Apollo Global Management Inc. has traded down substantially since. Mallinckrodt has been working to emerge from bankruptcy under a negotiated restructuring to trim roughly $1.3 billion in debt from its balance sheet. The company filed for chapter 11 protection in 2020 to address ballooning liabilities related to its production of opioids and antitrust claims around its flagship H.P. Acthar gel product.

After strongly indicating that he would rule against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester’s bid to stop sexual-abuse survivors from going after parishes and other diocese affiliates in state court lawsuits, Bankruptcy Court Judge Paul Warren yesterday denied the diocese’s request to reimpose a freeze on state court actions against priests and other church officials, the Rochester Beacon reported. Some 300 such actions accusing Rochester diocese parish priests and other church officials of sexually abusing children decades ago had been put on hold for some two years under a pact between the diocese and abuse survivors early in the diocese’s chapter 11 bankruptcy. The diocese filed the bankruptcy petition in September 2019. The formerly frozen state court actions and the diocese’s bid for court protection came as a result of New York’s passage of the Child Victims Act. The CVA temporarily lifted a seven-year statute of limitations on sexual abuse. The law prompted thousands of adults who had been molested as children but had not gone after their abusers at the time a chance to pursue their abusers. The agreement to freeze the state court cases unraveled in late March as abuse survivors’ patience with the bankruptcy’s glacial pace wore thin and the creditors committee declined to renew the pact. The diocese’s attempt to have the freeze involuntarily reimposed did not sit well with the more than 400 abuse survivors with claims in the bankruptcy.