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Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn is allowing Jon Corzine and other former insiders of collapsed brokerage MF Global to tap another $10 million of insurance funds to defend lawsuits accusing them of hastening the firm's downfall, Reuters reported yesterday. Judge Glenn granted the request from Corzine and the others at a court hearing, raising to $40 million from $30 million the cap on what the defendants can draw. Judge Glenn authorized roughly $3.7 million more to pay the legal fees of defendants no longer involved in the cases. However, Judge Glenn was clearly irked at the request, saying he had expected the initial $30 million to cover most of the litigation.

The coal supplier to one of Optim Energy LLC's Texas power plants is protesting a bankruptcy judge's decision to block the supplier from filing a lawsuit that could reduce or even throw out Optim Energy's $700 million debt to its owner, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Walnut Creek Mining Co. filed an appeal on Wednesday in bankruptcy court challenging a decision from Judge Brendan Shannon, who determined that the proposed lawsuit would be too difficult to win when he rejected Walnut Creek Mining's permission to file it.

A flurry of filings this week in the Evergreen International Aviation bankruptcy case in Delaware has revealed a sharp division among stakeholders, the Oregonian reported today. On one side is an Arizona company that leased 1.5 million square feet to Evergreen to park aircraft. On the other side is a coalition of lenders led by Goldman Sachs. The parties are tussling over who should be first in line when and if the trustee in the case proceeds with a proposed sale of "substantially all" of Evergreen's aircraft assets to Jet Midwest, a Kansas City company.

Coldwater Creek Inc.’s unsecured creditors are opposing the liquidating retailer’s proposed plan to exit bankruptcy, arguing that serious revisions need to be made to ensure that creditors recover as much money as possible in the case, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In a court filing on Wednesday, a committee of unsecured creditors asked a judge to slow down the rushed timeline of the five-week-old case “before significant estate resources are needlessly wasted.” If given more time, the committee says that it will work with Coldwater on a new creditor-repayment plan, one that allows creditors to pursue litigation against the company’s former officers and lenders and that gives the committee more control over the liquidation process.

Nine of Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP 's former international partners are the latest targets of clawback litigation in the defunct firm's bankruptcy case, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Dewey's liquidation trustee filed suits on Tuesday in bankruptcy court seeking the return of $22 million paid to the partners when the firm was allegedly insolvent. None of the lawyers named in the suits signed on to a $70.4 million settlement struck with the Dewey estate in 2012.

Residential Capital LLC is trying to claw back more than $20 million from companies it did business with before its 2012 bankruptcy filing, including Xerox Corp. and First American Financial Corp., the Wall Street Journal reported today. In 36 separate lawsuits filed on Monday in bankruptcy court, the former mortgage services arm of Ally Financial Inc. is seeking money from parties that provided services to it in the three months before its May 14, 2012, chapter 11 filing. Neither Xerox, which through itself and two subsidiaries provided various business services for ResCap for more than $2 million, nor First American, which offered more than $6 million worth of property inspections and other services for the company, didn't immediately comment on the law suits. The rest of the suits are against risk-management firms, mortgage information providers and other vendors, mostly for amounts between $50,000 and $1 million. Such suits often end up in settlements.

Zachary Warren, the 29-year-old former client relations manager at Dewey & LeBoeuf who was indicted alongside three of the firm's top leaders, is seeking to separate his case from the others, arguing there is an unacceptable risk of "guilt by association" at trial, the New York Law Journal reported today. Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office last month said their case at trial would take four to six months. Supreme Court Justice Robert Stolz is aiming for a January 2015 trial. But Warren's lawyers said if he were tried separately, his trial would take no more than two weeks and they would be prepared in October if their severance motion was granted.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s brokerage wants court approval to set aside more money for creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. In a Thursday bankruptcy court filing, brokerage trustee James W. Giddens said that he needs to create a reserve account for holders of secured and priority claims against the brokerage. Those claims, which include fees incurred during Lehman's bankruptcy and other claims, are currently estimated at about $624 million. If Giddens gets that approval, he said that he wants to turn his attention to paying out more than $4 billion still owed to general unsecured creditors of the brokerage, a group that includes former employees and others.

A group of former Howrey LLP partners have agreed to pay more than $4.2 million to the defunct law firm’s bankruptcy estate through a settlement that Howrey’s trustee calls a crucial step toward constructing a plan to pay back creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The proposed settlement, filed on Monday in bankruptcy court includes contributions of between $21,000 and $192,000 each from 60 of the firm’s former equity partners. Howrey trustee Allan Diamond sought to claw back money that the partners were paid when the firm was allegedly insolvent. Diamond said that he reached the deal after nearly two years of negotiations and will use the outlines of the settlement — which calls for partners to return 16 percent of what they earned between April 2010 and the firm’s dissolution a year later — to reach similar deals with the rest of the firm’s former partners. Diamond said that he will sue any of the 70 or so remaining partners who refuse to settle.

A $100 million settlement between the owners of New England Compounding Center, the Massachusetts pharmacy connected to a deadly meningitis outbreak in 2012, and its controlling trustee was filed in bankruptcy court yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Under the settlement, the New England Compounding Center, its insurers and one of the company's affiliates will contribute more than $100 million to a compensation fund to be distributed to the pharmacy's creditors, including those who died or suffered significant injuries after receiving injections of tainted steroids traced to the pharmacy. The settlement, which had been expected, still requires approval from Judge Henry J. Boroff of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Boston before distributions can be made to victims. The trustee, Paul D. Moore, said he hopes to complete the process by the end of the year.