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Lawyers for people injured by exploding Takata Corp. air bags told a U.S. bankruptcy court judge yesterday that the company's restructuring plan is being skewed to benefit automakers over victims, Reuters reported. TK Holdings Inc, the U.S. business of Takata, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday due to tens of billions of dollars of liabilities from recalls and lawsuits over its air bags, along with 11 Mexican and U.S. subsidiaries. Most of Takata's obligations are owed to automakers for recalling and replacing millions of its air bags, and the Japanese supplier's restructuring plan relies heavily on financial support from its customers. Several personal-injury lawyers told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Brendan Shannon that Takata had made too many concessions to automakers, without investigating the value of their claims. Lawyers for TK Holdings and General Motors Co. argued that the need for financing outweighed the need to investigate the protections granted to the automakers, which could be investigated later. Authorities have linked 16 deaths, mostly in the United States, and more than 180 injuries to explosions of Takata air bag inflators made with ammonium nitrate that became volatile with age and prolonged exposure to heat.

Caesars Entertainment Operating Corp. received a bankruptcy court’s approval in January to end a chapter 11 case that began in January 2015. But the proceedings continue to make payments to law firms Kirkland & Ellis, Jones Day and Proskauer Rose, the American Lawyer reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge A. Benjamin Goldgar in Chicago approved another round of payouts last week in a case that has shaved $10 billion in debt from the gaming giant’s balance sheet. The payments, for work dating from October through the closing of the bankruptcy on Jan. 17, will push Kirkland’s payout to more than $70 million for representing Caesars. Kirkland will receive $7.1 million for three-and-a-half months’ work on behalf of the debtor. Proskauer, which represented a group of unsecured creditors in the case, will be paid about $2.2 million for its work during that timeframe, bringing its total to around $29 million. And Jones Day, which went to bat for a group of second-lien junior bondholders, will make about $1.5 million in the sixth payout of legal fees since the case began more than two years ago, bringing the Cleveland-founded firm’s total payout to just north of $25 million, according to bankruptcy court filings. For those three firms, there is likely to be at least one more payment authorized by the court, but the legal fees have largely tapered off from earlier in Caesars’ chapter 11 proceedings.