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Former billionaire Samuel Wyly’s Dallas church is taking on the might of the U.S. government for a some of the businessman’s remaining fortune, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Wyly, who filed for bankruptcy after losing a fraud lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission, owes $20,000 to the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, under a 2010 pledge to donate $100,000 over five years, the religious organization said in a Nov. 14 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas. The church, which says it needs the money to finish a building restoration project, argues in the filing that the SEC and the Internal Revenue Service, which seek the most money from Wyly, are trying to silence smaller creditors that can’t match the government’s “unlimited” legal resources.

The law firm accused by the Spokane, Wash., diocese of mishandling a 2007 bankruptcy and settlement with clergy sex abuse victims filed a motion to dismiss the diocese's claims on Monday in federal bankruptcy court, the National Catholic Reporter reported yesterday. Based in part on depositions from retired Bishop William Skylstad and Fr. Steven Dublinski, the diocese's previous vicar general, the Monday filing charges that "the current claims are simply an attempt to throw mud at Paine Hamblen to try to get some insurance money." For its work leading to the 2007 settlement, the law firm of Paine Hamblen was ordered to be paid about $3.5 million by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Patty Williams. The Spokesman-Review on Wednesday reported that the diocese "is asking for at least $4 million in damages from the firm after alleging attorneys failed to disclose a conflict of interest in the case and were wrong about how many claims would be made against the church by abuse victims." Paine Hamblen's motion to dismiss was in response to a second effort by the diocese seeking return of bankruptcy attorney fees. A suit was filed in state court in 2012, but it was "removed to federal court and dismissed by a federal judge because the diocese did not file in the federal bankruptcy court" as would have been required, said Jane Brown, managing partner of Paine Hamblen.

The bankrupt company that leaked a coal processing chemical into Charleston, W.V.’s Elk River in January could reduce the amount of contaminated material it needs to clean from its polluted storage site, the Associated Press reported today. Regulators with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection revealed an agreement in which Freedom Industries could enter a voluntary toxic cleanup program. Previous agreements required Freedom to remove all contaminated soil and groundwater from the polluted site. The new agreement leaves that option on the table, but also allows Freedom to apply for entry into WVDEP’s Land Restoration Voluntary Remediation Program. In bankruptcy filings, company officials have said the remediation program will be less expensive, lessening its burden for cleaning the site.

Kodak earlier this month filed a final tally of costs for its chapter 11 bankruptcy, as well as a motion asking the final closing of the case, the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle. That $245.2 million total is $2.1 million more than the $243.1 million worth of bills presented to the court in November 2013. Kodak semi-officially ended its bankruptcy in September 2013 when its reorganization plan took effect. That moment saw the company selling off its Personalized Imaging and Digital Imaging businesses to a British pension fund, cancel out all its existing stock, and issue new shares to an array of parties holding IOUs, from the financiers who helped pay for Kodak's bankruptcy to the legions of creditors left with unpaid bills when the company filed for protection. Since then, the Kodak General Unsecured Creditors Trust has been suing numerous firms that did business with Kodak before the bankruptcy, seeking to claw back some of the money Kodak spent in those pre-bankruptcy weeks to then divide it up among various unsecured creditors. The court also has continued to rule on cases where Kodak objected to some of the 7,000 claims and requests for payment that had been filed against it. And during all this time, Kodak has been paying out what it had been ordered to pay as part of its reorganization plan. According to the motion, Kodak has paid out some stock and stock warrants to holders of unsecured claims, and expects to do one final payout of yet more.

Samuel Wyly and the estate of his brother Charles should pay $329 million for using offshore accounts to hide stock holdings and engage in illegal trading, regulators argued in seeking to increase the penalty ordered by a judge, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Wyly and the estate should pay that sum plus an undetermined amount of interest, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer told U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan today. In September, the judge found that the brothers must pay $187.7 million plus interest, which could push the amount to more than $300 million. The bigger penalty, if accepted, could more than double what the agency is owed, according to court filings.

U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest on Monday approved Anadarko Petroleum Corp.'s $5.15 billion settlement over its ill-fated acquisition of Tronox Inc., the final major hurdle in the federal government's largest environmental settlement ever, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Judge Forrest said that Tronox 's bankruptcy judge was correct earlier this year when he signed off on the deal. Approval from the two judges was necessary for the settlement to be completed. In agreeing with Bankruptcy Judge Allan L. Gropper, Judge Forrest overruled two objections from claimants who thought the settlement was too low or that they deserved a greater share of the proceeds.

The central figure in the landmark $40 billion case against the U.S. government regarding the bailout of AIG will take the witness stand later this week in Washington, D.C., possibly as early as Thursday, Fox Business reported yesterday. The Department of Justice confirmed that former AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg is on the witness list for this week. Greenberg, who sued the government through his investment and charitable firm Starr International, will be called to the stand by government attorneys. Greenberg’s own lawyer will then cross-examine the 89-year-old insurance executive who ran AIG for decades. Greenberg and other AIG shareholders have argued that the government bailed out AIG without exploring other options, which Greenberg has contended that he could have facilitated first. The government has argued that time was of the essence and that a crisis allowed to fester at AIG would have severely impaired the banking system and devastated market confidence. If Greenberg isn’t called to testify Thursday or Friday, his appearance could be pushed to next week.

A former low-level employee at the law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf will be tried separately on criminal charges arising from the collapse of the once-mighty New York firm and not stand trial with three of its former top executives, The New York Times Dealbook reported on Friday. A New York State judge ruled on Friday that Zachary Warren, who was a client-relations manager at the 1,300-lawyer firm and has since become a lawyer, will be tried after the main defendants. Those defendants are accused of masterminding a scheme to use accounting gimmicks to mask the precarious state of Dewey’s finances on the eve of the financial crisis. The decision sets the stage for two back-to-back criminal trials over the events leading up to Dewey’s bankruptcy filing in December 2012, which cost investors in the firm as much $200 million. This year, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, stunned the New York legal community by announcing a 106-count indictment against Dewey’s former top executives — Steven H. Davis, Dewey’s former chairman; Stephen DiCarmine, the firm’s onetime executive director; and Joel Sanders, the firm’s former chief financial officer. At the same time, he announced that his office had secured guilty pleas from seven former employees of the firm, many of whom once worked in Dewey’s finance and accounting department.

The bankruptcy trustee of failed IndyMac Inc. has agreed to settle a fight over tax refunds with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. ending five years of litigation, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The former parent of IndyMac Bank gets to collect about $58.6 million in state and federal tax refunds, while the FDIC gets to stand in line with the rest of the parent company’s unsecured creditors and collect its share, according to papers filed on Wednesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles. Set for court review Dec. 3, the pact is designed to speed a payday for investors that took a hit when the California mortgage lender shut its doors in 2008 after worried depositors withdrew their funds. While it doesn’t settle all of the disputes between IndyMac’s parent and the federal agency, the settlement does wrap up the most significant points of contention, such as the FDIC’s insistence it is owed $5 billion on a top-priority basis. In cases around the country, the FDIC has been fighting bank holding companies over who gets to collect tax refunds tied to the losses rung up when the housing market collapsed in 2007.

General Motors said in a court filing yesterday that it should not have to face lawsuits based on safety issues in cars made before its 2009 bankruptcy, including a faulty ignition switch that led to the recall of 2.6 million cars earlier this year, Reuters reported yesterday. The brief, filed in Manhattan bankruptcy court, lays out GM's legal arguments and is the opening salvo in litigation from GM drivers who say the automaker should make them whole for losses related to recalls this year. The ignition switch recalls, which began in February, have since grown to encompass numerous problems affecting millions of vehicles. The company is facing some 130 lawsuits over accidents and lost vehicle value. In April, GM asked Judge Robert Gerber of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, who oversaw the bankruptcy, to bar claims related to vehicles made before 2009 based on the terms of the sale order that created the so-called "New GM." Liabilities related to older vehicles were largely retained by a shell company now known as "Old GM." Plaintiffs' lawyers have asked Gerber to rule that bankruptcy protection does not apply because their clients were not informed about the problems at the time and had no chance to argue their cases during the proceedings. GM said yesterday that plaintiffs' lawyers were trying to re-litigate issues that had been aired fully and settled five years ago.