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A former Freedom Industries Inc. president was charged for the second time this month in connection with a West Virginia chemical spill that contaminated water for 300,000 residents, this time in an indictment accusing him and three company officials with polluting the Elk River near Charleston, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Federal prosecutors also announced separate charges today against two other people, a plant manager and environmental consultant, for violating the federal Clean Water Act. The leak from one of Freedom’s tanks sent about 7,500 gallons (28,400 liters) of a cleaning agent used in coal-mining operations into the river, contaminating drinking water in the state’s largest city and sending more than 100 residents to the hospital. Earlier this month, Gary Southern, Freedom’s former president, was accused by the government of lying in the company’s bankruptcy filing, which was triggered by lawsuits following the spill.

The owner of the New Elk coal mine near Trinidad, Colo., has filed for chapter 15 protection after the bottom fell out of its coal export market, the Denver Post reported today. Toronto-based Cline Mining Corp. is seeking court approval to reduce $55 million in debt by turning ownership of the company over to its secured lenders. Prices for metallurgical coal, also known as coking coal, reached $330 per metric ton in 2011. But amid a supply glut and declining world demand for steel, the price recently has hovered around $115.

Puerto Rico's electric power authority PREPA is expected to ask bondholders to extend a forbearance agreement set to expire at the end of next March, Reuters reported yesterday. A presentation to the bondholders in New York yesterday highlighted the extent of the problems facing PREPA and fell short of an expected business plan. A comprehensive plan to turn around PREPA's failing business will take longer to produce than originally expected, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

Bankrupt GT Advanced Technologies Inc. won approval of a settlement with Apple Inc., preventing costly litigation by granting the iPhone maker $439 million in claims against furnaces at a synthetic sapphire plant, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Henry Boroff said at a hearing yesterday that he would sign an order approving a revised settlement agreement. During a break in the hearing, GT Advanced and Apple made changes addressing concerns the judge raised. Judge Boroff previously said yesterday that he was concerned about terms of the settlement giving Apple the immediate right to foreclose on Merrimack, N.H.-based GT Advanced’s assets in some circumstances. Under the revised accord, if GT Advanced is still in chapter 11, Apple will file a notice of non-payment and intent to foreclose with the court before acting.

Nortel Networks Corp. bondholders will soon know whether a $1 billion settlement with the failed company will pass muster in a U.S. bankruptcy court, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Approval of the settlement, allotting bondholders $1 billion in interest on their investment in Nortel's distressed debt, will have a "direct and substantial" impact on the Canadian company and its creditors — including disabled and retired workers in Canada and Europe — are counting on it for payment, said Ken Coleman, a lawyer for Nortel's Canadian parent company. If the pact fails, it will be a blow to the hedge funds that snapped up Nortel's debt at a steep discount after the company collapsed in 2009. Bond prices indicate investors are expecting payment in full, with much interest.

The bankruptcy trustee winding down Lehman Brothers’ brokerage business on Monday said he would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a ruling that awarded billions of dollars in disputed assets to Barclays PLC, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Following Lehman’s 2008 bankruptcy filing, Barclays acquired Lehman’s brokerage business in a “no cash” transaction, Lehman says. A year later, a legal fight over the transaction ensued when Lehman sued Barclays, saying that the British bank negotiated a secret discount in the transaction. Judge James Peck, then Lehman’s bankruptcy judge, concluded that Barclays didn’t receive an improper “windfall” from the sale but wasn’t entitled to the so-called margin cash assets worth $4 billion. Later, however, a three-judge Court of Appeals panel said “ambiguities and loose ends were inevitable” in such a speedy sale and ruled that Barclays was entitled to these disputed assets. Lehman trustee James W. Giddens yesterday said that “while the bankruptcy Court rightly rejected Barclays’ claims to the margin cash assets, the decisions by the District and Appeals Courts reduced the amount available for the general estate by $4 billion, frustrated the purpose of the liquidation, and undermined the credibility of a sale hearing.”

Caesars Entertainment Corp. plans to skip a $225 million interest payment to junior creditors of its biggest unit yesterday as the gaming company looks to wrap up a debt restructuring agreement with senior bondholders, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The most indebted U.S. casino operator will enter a 30-day grace period to make the coupon payment to owners of $4.5 billion of 10 percent of second-lien notes due December 2018. Las Vegas-based Caesars won’t make the payment while it’s seeking to resolve a plan to cut borrowings of the unit, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., with its most-senior bondholders. Caesars and a group of first-lien bondholders are nearing the conclusion of negotiations to put the operating company into a Delaware bankruptcy court by Jan. 15. The new company would emerge from chapter 11 proceedings as a real estate investment trust.

One of the nation’s largest Social Security disability firms is preparing for a possible chapter 11 protection filing as soon as this week as it faces roughly $40 million of debt and shrinking demand for its services amid tightening government scrutiny of claims, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Binder & Binder, founded by brothers Harry and Charles Binder, is working with law firm Lowenstein Sandler LLP and turnaround firm Development Specialists Inc. to prepare the chapter 11 filing. The firm, which is dependent upon government-paid fees earned from shepherding Social Security disability claimants through the system, owes about $23 million to lenders U.S. Bank and Capital One Bank. The firm owes about another $16 million in unsecured debt to Stellus Capital Management, a spinoff of investment firm D.E. Shaw & Co.

Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s highest-ranked lenders spurned the casino company’s efforts to restructure its most indebted unit, imperiling tentative agreements reached over three months of talks with a broader group of creditors, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. KKR & Co. and Franklin Resources Inc. were among holders of the company’s bank loans that exited the confidential negotiations, said two people with knowledge of the matter who didn’t want to be named because the creditors weren’t publicly identified. BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest asset manager and an owner of the company’s first-lien bonds, also left the talks. The casino operator has been working to seal an agreement with its creditors to put the Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. unit and its $18.4 billion of debt into chapter 11 bankruptcy by Jan. 15. The subsidiary would then be split into a real estate investment trust that owns its properties and another unit that would manage them.

A U.S. Supreme Court case that could disrupt the professional fees earned in bankruptcy cases has become a cause of concern to federal government officials, former judges and lawyers from all corners of the industry, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Brief reported today. In a batch of friend-of-the-court briefs filed this week, parties that often have opposing interests in bankruptcy cases uniformly urge the nation's high court to uphold the rights of bankruptcy judges to award adviser fees as they see fit. Specifically, the case — a dispute between the law firm Baker Botts LLP and its former client Asarco — threatens the ability of lawyers, financial advisers and others to be compensated for the time spent defending against objections to their own fee applications.