Bankruptcy Law

Contributions

Observers gen­er­al­ly agree that the assump­tion of execu­to­ry con­tracts by debtors in pos­ses­sion in Chap­ter 11 pro­ceed­ings pro­motes the pur­pos­es of the Bank­rupt­cy Code and accords with Con­gress’ intent. Yet courts have been riv­en by the ques­tion of whether the plain text of sec­tion 365 allows the prac­tice. This Con­tri­bu­tion argues that courts for­bid­ding assump­tion of execu­to­ry con­tracts by debtors in pos­ses­sion have mis­di­rect­ed the focus of their tex­tu­al analy­sis. Close exam­i­na­tion of an over­looked phrase with­in sec­tion 365 and of the inter­ac­tions between sec­tions 365 and 1107 pro­vides two inde­pen­dent tex­tu­al bases for courts to read the Code in keep­ing with con­gres­sion­al intent.

Contributions

May bank­rupt­cy courts assume “relat­ed to” juris­dic­tion under 28 U.S.C. § 1334(b) over a post-con­fir­ma­tion suc­ces­sor lia­bil­i­ty suit when the estate’s assets have already been dis­bursed? Michael Mur­ray (’17) exam­ines this ques­tion, based on his expe­ri­ence at the 2016 Duber­stein Moot Court Com­pe­ti­tion, spon­sored by St. John’s Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law. His Con­tri­bu­tion ana­lyzes the legal land­scape of “relat­ed to juris­dic­tion” in bank­rupt­cy courts. Ulti­mate­ly, the Con­tri­bu­tion pro­pos­es that the Sev­enth Cir­cuit has adopt­ed the clear­est inter­pre­ta­tion of the statute and rea­son­ably lim­its “relat­ed to” juris­dic­tion to dis­putes in which either the debtor is a par­ty or the dis­pute affects the amount or dis­tri­b­u­tion of the debtor’s estate.