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Clark Appliance, a high-end home appliance retailer in business for more than 100 years, filed an emergency voluntary petition for chapter 11 relief on Friday, the Indianapolis Star reported yesterday. In a letter to customers, owner Bob Clark said that the move was motivated by a number of financial problems that have plagued the company since 2008. Court documents state that Clark Appliance owes about $2.2 million to its largest single creditor, General Electric. First Business Capital Corp., an asset-based lender in Madison, Wis., is owed about $2 million.

A bankruptcy judge will rule next week if Energy Future Holdings Corp., a bankrupt Texas power company, can conduct an auction for its power distribution business, which is likely worth billions of dollars, Reuters reported yesterday. "I believe the record is sufficiently dense and the issues sufficiently important that I need some time to digest that and make a reasoned ruling," said Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi. His comments concluded four days of testimony and arguments on the company's request to start an unusual auction process. The judge said he will read his decision from the bench on Nov. 3. The company framed the proposed process as an opportunity to maximize the value of its 80 percent indirect stake in Oncor, a non-bankrupt affiliate that operates the largest network of power lines in Texas.

Texas businessman Charles Wyly had “no significant life insurance” when he died in a 2011 car crash, leaving his widow insolvent and dependent on family in the midst of a U.S. regulator’s fraud lawsuit against her husband’s estate, according to bankruptcy court records, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Caroline “Dee” Wyly, exhausted the liquid assets in her husband’s estate and can no longer tap the funds to pay for living expenses or litigation, her lawyer said in a filing two days ago in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas. The investor’s widow, known in Texas for her philanthropy in education and performing arts, filed a chapter 11 petition on Oct. 23, citing financial fallout from the Securities and Exchange Commission case against her husband in Manhattan. She isn’t accused of wrongdoing.

A group of Italian investors seeking payment of their defaulted Argentine bonds lost a bid to collect a portion of $539 million the South American country deposited in Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The judge overseeing Argentine bond litigation in New York rejected the claim yesterday, ruling sovereign funds located outside the U.S. are immune from seizure. U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa said that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which limits the ability of people to sue foreign governments, doesn’t permit the investors to seize the funds. Argentina defaulted on a record $95 billion in 2001, roiling international markets and limiting the nation’s access to credit. Argentina exchanged 92 percent of its defaulted bonds for new ones, at a sharp discount, in restructurings in 2005 and 2010. The Italian investors said that they bought the bonds when they were issued and didn’t agree to exchange them for the new bonds.

The owner of two Arizona dairy farms has filed for chapter 11 protection, accusing its lender of fraud and saying that the years following a historical drop in milk prices during the 2009 recession have been difficult for independent farms, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. D&E Dairy Farms LLC, which owns Rio Bravo Dairy and JDF Dairy, specifically blamed its need to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy on an aggressive lending approach in the wake of the recession by Farm Credit Services Southwest, an approach that included fraudulent misrepresentations, D&E alleges. Alongside its chapter 11 filing, D&E filed a lawsuit against Farm Credit Services Southwest, which is part of the Farm Credit System, over these allegations, requesting actual and punitive damages to be determined by a jury.

Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. idled 353 slot machines with names such as Top Dollar, Jackpot, Loveboat and Dangerous Beauty when it closed its Plaza casino in Atlantic City, N.J., after declaring bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Now the company is betting it can squeeze a bit more value from the slots by selling the machines and unloading the cost of securing, maintaining and storing them. The company asked Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross for permission to sell the slots for $146,650 to Patriot Gaming & Electronics Inc., with offices in New Gretna, New Jersey. That works out to about $415 each for Patriot, which repurposes and distributes used slot machines, according to its website. The slots “are no longer necessary” for business and will help “obtain meaningful value” for creditors, Trump Entertainment said in an Oct. 24 filing.

New court filings show that the Backstreet Boys have settled their claims against their creator, Lou Pearlman, whose bankruptcy filing preceded the onetime music mogul’s arrest on fraud charges, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The pop singers said that Pearlman and his Trans Continental Records owed them roughly $3.5 million. Those claims had been challenged last year by a bankruptcy trustee on the grounds that they lacked the necessary proof to back them up. The fighting continued into this year when a bankruptcy judge ordered lawyers for the band and the trustee to work it out. Under the settlement, the Backstreet Boys will receive $99,000 on account of their claims. They’ll also get to take possession of a variety of recordings of their music as well as a “Star Trek Adventure” VHS tape.

A U.S. judge said yesterday that she would order the assets of Texas entrepreneur Sam Wyly, who once made the Fortune 400 list, temporarily frozen since he filed for bankruptcy, Reuters reported yesterday. During a hearing in Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said that she was "not very happy" about the bankruptcy filing, which came after she ordered him and the estate of his late brother Charles to pay $187.7 million plus interest for engaging in fraud. The judge said she would freeze the assets of Wyly and his brother's estate, as well as funds held in offshore trusts at the center of a lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Judge Scheindlin also said that the freeze, which she still needs to sign, would restrict the Wylys' family members from transferring any assets they received or will receive from the defendants or the trusts.

Robotics vehicle maker Seegrid Corp. has filed for chapter 11 protection after a battle over financing and control of the business left it unable to meet debt obligations, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today. The Findlay company, founded in 2003 by two Carnegie Mellon University robotic scientists, Hans Moravec and Scott Friedman, has outstanding debt of more than $45 million, according to the filing. The company’s two largest shareholders — O’Hara grocer Giant Eagle and an investment group led by a former Seegrid CEO, Anthony Horbal — headed to court this summer to battle over its future, with both alleging the other was being uncooperative. According to the bankruptcy filing on Tuesday, Seegrid’s board on Sept. 18 approved a restructuring term sheet presented by Giant Eagle that laid out a plan for a prepackaged reorganization plan. The company expects to receive up to $3 million from Giant Eagle to act as bridge financing during the restructuring period. The grocer is also expected to provide additional post-reorganization financing that could give it an even larger share of Seegrid.

A federal judge is set to decide whether to close out the case of a legally troubled oil drilling company in Kentucky, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Joan Lloyd will take up the case of Mammoth Resource Partners on Nov. 4 during a hearing in Louisville. The trustee for the company, Robert Leasure, filed documents saying that there is no workable plan to bring the company out of bankruptcy as a still-functioning business. Mammoth Resource Partners, based in Cave City, Ky., filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010. The company, owner Roger Cory and Kentucky regulators reached a settlement in 2007 requiring compliance with the law and imposing a $20,000 fine, of which $15,000 was suspended.