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The Houston Astros asked a federal bankruptcy judge Monday to dismiss an involuntary chapter 11 bankruptcy case that had been filed on Sept. 27 against the parent company of Comcast SportsNet Houston, describing the effort by Comcast and its affiliates to restructure the Astros-Rockets-Comcast partnership through bankruptcy as a “road to nowhere,” the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday. The 35-page document was filed with U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Marvin Isgur, who has set an Oct. 28 hearing to determine whether he will dismiss the case, filed by four Comcast affiliates against Houston Regional Sports Network, the parent company of CSN Houston, and to determine whether an interim trustee should be named to oversee the network if it remains in bankruptcy court. Four creditors affiliated with Comcast — National Digital Television Center, CSN California, Comcast Sports Management Services and Houston SportsNet Finance — filed the Sept. 27 petition alleging that CSN Houston faces an “urgent financial and corporate government crisis” and cannot pay its bills because of “total gridlock” among the partners. The Astros, however, describe the bankruptcy filing as an effort by Comcast to “gain control over the Astros’ most valuable asset, the media rights to televise their own Major League Baseball games.” The Astros also say that Comcast “orchestrated the (bankruptcy) filing in bad faith” in an effort to gain a “tactical advantage over the Astros in their partnership dispute.” The request for a trustee, they add, is improper because the trustee would have power to make decisions regarding media rights agreements, which the Astros claim “cannot be assigned as a matter of law.”

Longview Power LLC yesterday won a one-month delay in a showdown with contractors after telling a bankruptcy judge that there is hope of a settlement in the long-running disputes, according to a Dow Jones newswire report yesterday. Judge Brendan Shannon said he would "reluctantly" delay until Nov. 12 a court fight over cash between the troubled West Virginia plant operator and contractors that helped build the $2 billion facility. The cash fight that has consumed weeks of attorney time, the judge warned, won't make or break Longview's chances of a turnaround. He urged the combatants to focus on the larger questions of how to revamp a $1.2 billion debt load in chapter 11 while fixing the technical troubles that have plagued the facility. Longview’s contractors have pushed for a fast hearing on who controls some $58 million worth of letters of credit. Longview says that it's entitled to access the money to keep going and warns that it may be down to its last $1 million by the end of November. Longview, which operates a 700-megawatt coal-powered plant in Maidsville, W.Va., is the largest privately funded project in West Virginia history. The company filed for chapter 11 protection Aug. 30.

Blaming the government shutdown, lawyers for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services persuaded a bankruptcy judge on Monday to delay a court hearing that could have allowed a California medical supplier to get out of chapter 11 protection, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. Over opposition from lawyers for American Medical Technologies, who said that the 400-worker company shouldn’t be punished for political gridlock in Washington, D.C., Judge Mark Wallace pushed back the Irvine, Calif.-based company’s chapter 11 plan confirmation hearing by a month. The delay came after government lawyers complained that the shutdown left few workers at CMS to evaluate AMT’s plan to repay the $76 million that the agency says it’s owed.

ABI's Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11 yesterday heard testimony on state governmental interests during a public hearing at the State Capitol in Santa Fe, N.M. The Commission hearing was part of the annual convention of the States' Attorneys Bankruptcy Association and the National Association of Attorneys General. NAAG bankruptcy counsel Karen Cordry coordinated the testimony of state AGs on the role of government regulatory power in bankruptcy cases, enforcement of pre-petition governmental claims, sales of estate property free of interests, taxes, treatment of workers comp claims, section 525 discrimination and more. Witnesses included Maureen Leary (N.Y.), Allen Rosenberg (Mass.), Jennifer Gauger (Ind.), Peter Roth (N.H.), Ester Telser (Ill.), and Fred Rudzik (Fla.). The audio and full transcript from the lively hearing will be posted to the Commission website (www.commission.abi.org) next week and excerpted in the November issue of the ABI Journal. The next Commission field hearing will be Nov. 1 at the NCBJ annual meeting.

Efforts by creditors of Energy Future Holdings Corp. to reach a wide-ranging deal to address the Texas power company's massive debt load suffered a setback earlier this week when separate groups of lenders and bondholders gave a tepid response to a proposal from another large creditor, the giant mutual-fund firm Fidelity Investments, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Fidelity holds debt at many of Energy Future's subsidiaries and on Monday presented a plan for reworking the company's finances at the midtown Manhattan offices of its lawyers at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, in an effort to bridge disagreements among creditors so that the company can pursue an organized bankruptcy filing before month's end. Fidelity proposed senior lenders owed more than $20 billion at Texas Competitive Electric Holdings, an unregulated company subsidiary that sells power in a competitive wholesale market, forgive debt for a roughly 94 percent ownership stake in the parent company, the people said. Energy Future's private-equity owners would retain a roughly 2 percent stake, while unsecured bondholders at the parent company would get about 4 percent, under the proposal. Bondholders owed $1.5 billion at subsidiary Energy Future Intermediate Holding Co. would receive a so-called tracking stock at the parent company that would rise or fall based on the performance of Oncor, the regulated business that delivers electricity to consumers.

As LightSquared and its various suitors prepare to meet in court today over their competing plans to bring the company out of bankruptcy, the wireless venture said that it was unable to strike a compromise with Charlie Ergen's Dish Network Corp. on the parameters of a sale, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. LightSquared is set to ask Bankruptcy Judge Shelley C. Chapman to sign off on its plan to sell the company's assets under one restructuring proposal, but parties bidding on those assets disagree. Dish, which is bidding $2.2 billion for a chunk of LightSquared's wireless spectrum, wants a separate plan for that sale. LightSquared said in court papers that it tried to come to a compromise with Dish and a third group bidding on a smaller piece of the wireless-satellite company's spectrum, to "avoid waste of estate resources, duplication of effort" and market confusion. "Unfortunately, to date, LightSquared has been unsuccessful in its efforts," the company said.

A bankruptcy trustee for failed solar panel manufacturer Energy Conversion Devices is suing three Chinese companies for $950 million over allegations of price fixing and the dumping of cheap solar panels that drove the U.S. company out of business, the Wall Street Journal reported today. John Madden, who heads a trust created to recover money for Energy Conversion's creditors, said that the three companies — Trina Solar Ltd., Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. and Suntech Power Holdings Co. — engaged in a far-ranging scheme to flood the market with low-cost solar panels in an illegal bid to take over the U.S. market. The foreign manufacturers "conspired to export more than 95 percent of their production, dump their products in the U.S. at artificially low prices, and achieve market domination," Madden said in a lawsuit suit filed on Friday. The trustee is seeking to recoup $950 million in Energy Conversion's book value that was destroyed by the defendants' alleged plan to dump low-cost solar panels in the U.S.

Ormet Corp. will immediately close its 270,000-tonne-per-year aluminum smelter in Hannibal, Ohio, a casualty of historically low metal prices and "uncontrollable" power costs, Reuters reported on Friday. The move follows a ruling last Wednesday by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which approved some major changes to Ormet's power contract with energy supplier American Electric Power Co Inc. The state power regulator listed a number of conditions, including requiring the company, which filed for bankruptcy protection in February, to employ at least 650 full-time workers through 2018. Under those terms, costs would have increased by some $108 million next year, rather than falling by $54 million as outlined in Ormet's plan.

Personal Communications Devices LLC's unsecured creditors received court approval to dig deeper into the company's junior lenders, who are also its majority owners, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Alan Trust on Friday authorized the unsecured creditors to start probing the company and its second-lien lenders. If the company or lenders raise any concerns about the scope of the investigation that can't be resolved, Judge Trust said that he would hold another hearing on the unsecured creditors' request this Thursday.

OnCure Holdings Inc. received bankruptcy court approval of its bankruptcy-exit plan, which pays bondholders with proceeds from a $125 million sale of the company's assets, Dow Jones Newswires reported on Friday. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross approved the plan on Thursday, essentially concluding OnCure's chapter 11 case. OnCure's bankruptcy-exit plan pays bondholders, owed more than $205.5 million, with $42.5 million in cash and $82.5 million in new notes generated from a sale of OnCure's assets to Radiation Therapy Services Holdings Inc. A lender owed $15 million is being paid in full. Unsecured creditors and OnCure's equity owner Genstar Capital LLC are seeing their interests wiped out.