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The former Fisker Automotive Inc. appears headed for a peaceful end to its bankruptcy, having reached an accord with the official committee of unsecured creditors over terms of a cash-sharing plan, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Announced in a court filing yesterday, the agreement heads off the threat of a major clash next week, when the bankruptcy case of the former hybrid auto maker enters its final stages. China's Wanxiang Group bought the car-making operation at a bankruptcy auction, leaving $149.2 million worth of cash and stock for Fisker creditors. Fisker's creditor’s committee forced the auction after a fight with the company, which advocated a private deal with a company affiliated with Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li, an early Fisker backer.

Judges at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday appeared to challenge a key argument in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee's efforts to protect $60 million it holds in a trust for the care of cemeteries from being used to pay creditors in its bankruptcy, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported today. The three-judge panel questioned whether the archdiocese needs that entire $60 million to maintain its cemeteries. And one of the jurists, Seventh Circuit Judge Ann Claire Williams, said she found issues related to U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa's decision not to recuse himself from the lawsuit over those funds "troubling." The panel — Appellate Judges Williams and Joel Flaum, along with U.S. District Judge Robert Dow of the Northern District of Illinois — heard oral arguments Monday on several issues related to the bankruptcy, including First Amendment questions that could be of national significance as religious liberty cases make their way through courts around the country. In that lawsuit, filed by Archbishop Jerome Listecki as sole trustee of the cemetery trust, the church maintains that forcing it to turn over even $1 in cemetery funds to the bankruptcy estate would substantially burden its free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Proceeds from the estate would go to finance a settlement with sex abuse victims and the archdiocese's reorganization.

A Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. subsidiary that owns the Canyon Ranch Hotel & Spa, Miami Beach filed for chapter 11 protection on Sunday to ease the sale of the luxury property to the owner and manager of a portfolio of hotels that includes the Enchantment Resort in Sedona, Ariz., Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Still under construction when the failed investment bank picked it up through a deed in lieu of foreclosure in 2009, the Canyon Ranch hotel and condominium project has not generated enough cash to cover the Lehman loan, according to papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York.

Freedom Industries Inc. is planning a hasty demolition of its chemical storage facility on the banks of the Elk River, the site of the January spill that tainted a large portion of West Virginia's water supply, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In court papers filed on Friday, Freedom asked Bankruptcy Judge Ronald G. Pearson for the authority to proceed with the demolition, which could be completed by the end of June. The facility, called the Etowah River Terminal, comprises large chemical storage tanks as well as two computer-controlled loading stations, according to court documents. Under an order issued by West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection earlier this year, Freedom is required to dismantle all of the facility's storage tanks, piping and related machinery.

A nine-member group of senior managers and mine operations heads at James River Coal Co. would get aggregate payments of $890,000 to $2.7 million as part of a proposed incentive program, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The Richmond, Va.-based mining company, which is going through its second trip in bankruptcy, asked a federal bankruptcy court judge to approve incentive, retention and severance programs as James River Coal approaches a July asset auction. Pending approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond at a hearing on Wednesday, the senior managers and mine operations heads would get the payments based on the company meeting certain value targets achieved through a sale, a chapter 11 reorganization or both. Also up for approval are retention payments, not to exceed about $1.4 million in total, to 39 lower-level employees.

A federal bankruptcy judge's ruling has moved MedLab, a group of companies that provides clinical lab services to physicians and nursing homes, one step closer to fulfilling its plan to liquidate and to pay off creditors, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Peter Walsh on Friday approved the company's disclosure statement after no objections to the statement were received by a previously scheduled deadline. Under the proposed plan, only the company's secured lenders will be allowed to vote. Funds from the sale of MedLab's assets will be placed in a liquidation trust, from which the secured lenders will receive a distribution.

The debate over who deserves to profit from work that originated at a law firm that collapsed comes to a head on Wednesday when New York's highest court will hear arguments in cases stemming from the bankruptcies of Coudert Brothers LLP, which went under in 2005, and Thelen LLP, which closed in 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported today. A decision by the New York Court of Appeals will provide clarity into how much money, if any, should flow back to defunct firms' creditors, including those of the biggest U.S. law-firm failure ever, Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP. At issue is whether the estates of bankrupt law firms have stakes in so-called unfinished business, the assignments taken by partners to a new firm as their old firm dissolves. Bankruptcy administrators have long argued that the failing firms have valid claims. But partners at the nation's top law firms say that client business isn't a commodity that can be bought and sold. They say that clients have the freedom to choose counsel, and lawyers — and their new employers — shouldn't be punished for sticking with an assignment after a law firm collapses.

Nearly four years into its chapter 11 bankruptcy, Garlock Sealing Technologies Inc. has started the paperwork to get out of it, the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat & Herald reported on Saturday. The Palmyra, N.Y.-based maker of industrial gaskets and seals on Thursday filed a proposed reorganization plan in bankruptcy court. That 347-page document spells out how the company proposes to wrap up all the myriad asbestos-related personal-injury claims that caused it to file for bankruptcy in June 2010. The company, as well as parent company EnPro Industries, are proposing a $275 million trust fund, split over two accounts, to handle any current and future claims against Garlock.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp.'s agreement to pay $5.15 billion to clean up nuclear fuel and other pollution moved one step closer to reality yesterday after receiving a bankruptcy judge's approval, Reuters reported yesterday. The agreement reached in April, touted by the U.S. Department of Justice as the largest-ever environmental cleanup recovery, resolved a lawsuit against Anadarko and its Kerr-McGee unit from creditors of Tronox Inc., the paint materials maker that was once a subsidiary of Kerr-McGee. The lawsuit, which was joined by the DOJ, alleged that Tronox's 2009 bankruptcy was caused by the environmental liabilities it took on when Kerr-McGee spun it off in 2005. It said that the spinoff was a scheme by Kerr-McGee to get the liabilities off its books and make itself a more attractive takeover target for Anadarko, which acquired it in 2006.

Longview Power LLC, a West Virginia power plant built at a cost of $2 billion, is seeking a judge's permission to continue to rally support for its latest chapter 11 plan as well as permission to extend the period in which it alone can solicit votes on the plan without interference from outsiders, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. At a key hearing today, Bankruptcy Judge Brendan Shannon will consider Longview's requests, which face resistance from two major creditors and an insurance company. The creditors, contractors tied up in long-standing disputes over disrupted operations at the plant, both said that Longview's proposed supplemental chapter 11 plan materials are not ready to be sent out to creditors.