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Hartford lawyer James J. Tancredi has been tapped to become a U.S. bankruptcy judge for the District of Connecticut in Hartford, the Hartford Business Journal reported today. Tancredi, who is a partner at Day Pitney LLP, begins his judgeship Sept. 1. He fills a judicial vacancy created by retired Connecticut Bankruptcy Judge Alan H.W. Shiff, who served for nearly 40 years. For more than 30 years, Tancredi has represented financial institutions, creditors' committees, bondholders, investors and others in asset recovery actions, reorganizations, bankruptcies and insolvency proceedings. Tancredi is also one of the co-founders of Day Pitney's bankruptcy and restructuring practice.

Bankruptcy Judge A. Benjamin Goldgar said yesterday that Caesars Entertainment Corp. is unlikely to get protection from bondholder lawsuits that would last as long as its insolvent operating company is in bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Judge Goldgar today will decide whether to extend a halt on lawsuits in New York and Delaware, and if so, for how long. Goldgar made it clear yesterday that he would not give Caesars a lawsuit shield that lasts until after Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. wins approval of its reorganization plan, which can’t happen until next year at the earliest. “I’ve said that isn’t going to happen,” Goldgar said yesterday near the end of a three-day hearing on possibly halting bondholder lawsuits that could impose $11.4 billion in judgments on the parent company. The lawsuits are the biggest obstacle left to getting Caesars’ main operating unit out of bankruptcy. Bondholders want to use the suits, which a court examiner found have a good chance of succeeding, to boost their recoveries to more than the 34 percent offered by CEOC.

Despite some major recoveries in class actions over excessive 401(k) fees, the group of lawyers litigating these cases remains small, as few are willing to put the whole firm at risk, Law.com reported today. Jerome Schlichter, a founding partner at 21-attorney Schlichter Bogard & Denton, who filed the first 401(k) lawsuits in 2006, said he knew from the start that these cases had the potential to put his firm out of business. When Schlichter took on his first 401(k) class action, about 10 years ago, he found that no other firm was filing similar actions for excessive plan fees. By the time he filed a complaint, he had already put nearly two years into researching industry practices, he said. At first it seemed the defendants, with their double-digit teams of lawyers, would succeed in killing the effort, he said. In Tussey v. ABB, for example, defense counsel for ABB and Fidelity received $42 million in fees, according to a court filing in that case. Instead of backing away, Schlichter Bogard took the necessary steps to fight back. And now, suits are on the rise and so are the settlement figures and attorney fee recoveries.