Author Description

The 2011 supplement to Warren and Bussel's Bankruptcy, 8th edition, updates the casebook with the latest developments in Bankruptcy Law. Developments in the bankruptcy case law, already occurring rapidly in light of BAPCPA and the massive economic dislocations caused by the financial panic of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession, further accelerated in 2010-11. On June 23, 2011 in a stunning (albeit long delayed) follow-on to its 1982 Marathon decision, the Supreme Court in Stern v. Marshall declared certain aspects of the 1984 Bankruptcy Amendments and Federal Judges Act (BAFJA) jurisdictional statutes, which the system has relied upon for 27 years, unconstitutional. In addition, this Supplement provides users of the EIGHTH EDITION with key developments in the case law on both the consumer and the business side as well as a few statutory responses to the recent consumer credit/home mortgage crisis. Numerous appellate developments in addition to Stern v. Marshall are noted. Among them are five new Supreme Court decisions (Traveler's Indemnity v. Bailey; Milavetz; Lanning; Ransom; and Espinosa). On the consumer side, the Court's opinions in Ransom and Lanning, as well as the Fourth Circuit's ride-through decision in Jones, are reprinted in this Supplement. The key developments on the Chapter 11 front are the continuing ferment over 363 sales and gifting generated in part by the Chrysler and GM cases and some of the reaction against the limiting construction on 363(f), (m) imposed by In re PW, LLC. We reprint the Second Circuit decisions in Chrysler and DBSD, and include a long note on Pacific Lumber and Philadelphia Newspapers, the controversial decisions of the Third and Fifth Circuits authorizing sale under a plan without secured creditor consent or credit bidding on the basis of the indubitable equivalent language in 1129. We also have taken this opportunity to (i) substantially revise the equitable remedy/claim material using the Seventh Circuit decision in Apex