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Nortel Networks Corp.’s U.S. unit spent $169 million on its bankruptcy case in the first nine months of this year, and there’s no end in sight to the spending on its lawyers and advisers, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The numbers began popping up last Thursday on the bankruptcy docket after a lawyer for Nortel’s Canadian parent pointed out to a judge that the U.S. unit was about eight months in arrears in complying with its chapter 11 financial reporting requirements. Nortel filed eight months’ worth of financial reports between Thursday and Monday. Once the pride of the Canadian technology community, Nortel and its international counterparts launched a global liquidation in 2009, battered by the global economic slump. It sold its businesses and patents, ringing up $7.3 billion in the process. However, Nortel U.S., which had more than $1 billion in cash at the end of 2011, stopped filing its monthly financial reports earlier this year as it prepared for an international fight over how to distribute the proceeds of its global liquidation, and that pricey litigation continues.

TelexFree LLC’s bankruptcy advisers will forgo more than $1 million in fees they charged during the short time they worked for the company, which has since been accused of operating a massive pyramid scheme, the Wall Street Journal reported today. To head off objections from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, one of the many that have sued over the alleged fraud, attorneys at Greenberg Traurig and turnaround advisers at Alvarez & Marsal will dramatically slash the amount they charged TelexFree in the early days of its chapter 11 case. Court papers show that Greenberg will cut its request for $969,000 in fees to just $320,000, while its requested expenses of about $76,000 will remain the same. A&M’s roughly $876,000 in fees and expenses, meanwhile, will be cut to $435,000. In return for these agreed-to reductions — which together total $1.09 million — TelexFree’s court-appointed trustee and the SEC won’t object as the firms seek bankruptcy court approval for the fees. The SEC will also ask a district judge to lift the order freezing TelexFree’s assets so the firms can collect their fees.

The cost of Detroit's historic bankruptcy has reached $126 million and counting, surpassing the bills the big automakers faced when they were in similar straits, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. An internal report on fees to outside advisers shows costs have roughly grown by four times since December when the city reported the total bill at nearly $28 million. The city's leading law firm on the case already has charged $47 million. City officials describe the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy case as entering its final phase with the hope of exiting by year's end. The trial phase of the bankruptcy is under way and expected to stretch into October.

The law firm shepherding Detroit through the biggest-ever municipal bankruptcy has charged the city just over $26 million, according to a report yesterday from a court-appointed fee examiner, Reuters reported. The supplemental report adds $3 million in fees and nearly $83,000 in expenses billed in March by Jones Day, the former law firm of Detroit's state-appointed emergency manager, Kevyn Orr. Those amounts were not included in the January-March quarterly report fee examiner Robert Fishman submitted to U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Aug. 5. The addition of the March numbers brings Jones Day's total billing from July 2013 to March 2014 to $25.1 million in fees and $1 million in expenses. It also brings the total price tag for all of Detroit's professional services in the historic case and reported so far by the fee examiner to about $55 million.

The judge overseeing Energy Future Holdings’s massive bankruptcy appointed a committee to review the fees of lawyers and other professionals in the case, Reuters reported on Friday. Godfrey & Kahn, which advised a fee committee in the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, will advise a similar four-member committee in Energy Future's case, according to an order signed by Hon. Christopher Sontchi on Thursday. Energy Future, the former TXU Corp., declared bankruptcy in April to restructure more than $40 billion in debt, making it among the largest-ever chapter 11 cases. The army of financial advisers and high-priced, specialized restructuring lawyers will make the case an expensive one. Energy Future's estate will also be responsible for the fees of its official creditors' committee, and potentially other creditor factions. Energy Future's committee will include four members: one each chosen by the company, its creditors' committee and the U.S. Trustee, and one independent member.

The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington paid $15.8 million in fees and expenses to lawyers, financial advisers and other professionals involved in its 2011 bankruptcy, according to its final report filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court this week, DelawareOnline.com reported yesterday. As other dioceses have done around the nation, the Diocese of Wilmington sought chapter 11 protection in 2009 after a flood of civil lawsuits were filed by survivors of clergy sexual abuse under provisions of Delaware's 2007 Child Victim's Act. The 2007 law opened a two-year window for child sexual abuse cases that would otherwise have been barred by the statute of limitations. The diocese emerged from bankruptcy in 2011, paying $77.4 million into a trust fund to resolve all claims by abuse survivors and another $10 million into a pension fund for lay employees that was found to be underfunded during financial disclosures.

A bankruptcy judge ordered the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, now more than three years into its chapter 11 proceedings, to enter mediation with hundreds of sexual-abuse victims whose claims make up the vast majority of the church's liabilities, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Susan Kelley at a hearing last Wednesday endorsed a request for mediation made by the archdiocese a day earlier. The archdiocese's request for mediation singled out mounting legal expenses, which currently total far more than the pool of funds designated to repay victims.

A a judge yesterday ordered the Archdiocese of Milwaukee must come up with $1.35 million to pay lawyers involved in its ongoing bankruptcy case, at least a portion of the many more millions they're owed, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported today. The lawyers and other professionals involved haven't been paid since the archdiocese won a suspension of payments more than a year ago, saying that it barely had enough money to continue operations. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley at a hearing yesterday also granted the archdiocese's request Tuesday to return the case to mediation for a possible consensual resolution to the long, complex and fractious proceeding. Judge Kelley gave the parties 28 days to submit statements for the mediator, who ideally would begin the process in early September. A prior mediation effort in 2012 failed to reach a settlement.

Diamond McCarthy is suing ex-partner Sheila Gowan, seeking some of the $1.4 million that is likely to be paid to her for work in the Dreier law firm bankruptcy, The Global Legal Post reported today. She is expected to receive $1.4 million for her work as a chapter 11 trustee in the Dreier bankruptcy. However, Diamond McCarthy claims that she should be bound by a partnership agreement regarding the fees. It alleges breach of the partnership agreement and of fiduciary duty, as well as making some equitable claims, seeking punitive damages and lawyer’s fees. Gowan, a non-equity partner who worked in the firm’s New York office until a year ago, claims that she did not sign the partnership agreement.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has been running a tab when it comes to professionals working on its chapter 11 bankruptcy case, and lawyers for unsecured creditors — primarily survivors of sexual abuse — say that it is time to pay the bills, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Court records show the archdiocese has stacked up more cash than it projected back in January 2013, when it petitioned the bankruptcy court to suspend monthly professional fee payments on the grounds money was tight, according to papers filed by creditor lawyers led by James Stang. With a few exceptions, bankruptcy professionals have not been paid in 17 months, court papers say. As of the end of June, the archdiocese reported it had run up $5.8 million worth of fees, court records show. Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek S.C., the lead lawyer for the archdiocese, is owed the most, $2.9 million. Lead creditor firm Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones is owed $1.9 million, court records show. Lawyers for survivors contend that the archdiocese has the money, and it should pay. Creditors tracked the actual cash from the start of 2013, when the archdiocese moved for permission to suspend fee payments. They found the actual funds were always greater than projected in papers supporting the motion. This year, instead of the $2 million the archdiocese said it needed to keep on hand for operating expenses, it has had from $3.5 million to $4.2 million, according to creditors.