Serta Simmons Uptier: Implications

We now have the first major Court of Appeals decision on a liability management transaction. On the last day of 2024, Judge Andy Oldham of the 5th Circuit issued a very thoughtful and thorough opinion regarding the Serta Simmons uptier transaction and subsequent bankruptcy plan. (I have fond memories of Andy looking like a deer in the headlights on the 1st day of 1L Contracts when he was asked "What's an assumpsit?" by a certain former co-blogger...) Although the opinion is an important punctuation point, I don't think it will itself fundamentally change the use of liability management transactions; there's really little downside from pursuing them and potentially plenty of upside.

 

Is Elon Musk Trying to Protect Alex Jones's X Accounts?

There's a fascinating development in the Alex Jones Chapter 7 case.  Jones ended up in bankruptcy to try to avoid paying on the defamation judgment the Sandy Hook victims' families won against him. His case converted to a Chapter 7, and a trustee has been liquidating his assets. Among the assets the trustee is trying to sell are Jones's social media accounts in X (formerly Twitter). 

X has since filed an objection to the sale claiming that the X accounts are not the property of Jones, but are instead owned by X, which merely issued Jones a non-transferable license.  Now this "limited" objection is only about the "accounts" proper, not the content Jones posted on X. X claims that it is objecting because of it has an interest in preventing the transfer of accounts because of its concern about making sure that users are who they say they are.

X's professed concern about fake accounts is risible. X does not generally verify its users when it onboards them. Nor does X appear monitor in any way to determine if an account has in fact been transferred. Instead, X is a platform that is lousy with fake accounts and bots. So what's this really about?

As far as I can tell, the X objection to the sale is about Elon Musk wanting to ensure that Alex Jones can continue to use his Twitter handles and retain his followers and make it very difficult for anyone to delete or edit Jones's old posts.

Can Trump Fire the Fed Chair? Some Legal Realism

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has tersely indicated that he won't resign if asked by the President and that he cannot be fired or demoted. Peter Conti-Brown, who is a keen observer of Fed issues, has a nice summary of the state of the law. The basic idea is that as a formal legal matter, members of the Federal Reserve Board are removable by the president "for cause," such as inefficiency, neglect of office, and malfeasance. It's less clear if the President can demote the Chair to a mere Board member and, if so, what would be the standard for demotion, but it would seem strange that the greater cannot include the lesser. 

But here's the thing:  none of the legal rules matter. 

Unfair and Abusive Automatic CD Rollovers

Earlier this month the FTC finalized its “Click-to-Cancel” Rule to make it easier for consumers to get out of recurring subscriptions and memberships. The rule was promulgated under the FTC’s power to prohibit unfair and deceptive acts and practices in commerce, but the FTC’s jurisdiction under that power does not extend to banks, and banks have an auto-renew product that is in some instances much more problematic than automatic subscription renewals. What I’m talking about are automatic CD rollovers, which are sometimes done in an unfair and abusive way to rollover unsuspecting depositors into way-below-market-rate CD terms.

OCC Preemption Brief Regarding the Illinois Interchange Statute

Earlier this year Illinois passed a law that provides that “

an issuer, a payment card network, an acquirer bank, or a processor may not receive or charge a merchant any interchange fee on the tax amount or gratuity of an electronic payment transaction if the merchant 

informs the acquirer bank or its designee of the tax or gratuity amount as part of the authorization or settlement process for the electronic payment transaction.

” The statute defines interchange fees as "a fee established, charged, or received by a payment card network for the purpose of compensating the issuer for its involvement in an electronic payment transaction." In other words, no interchange fees may be levied on taxes or tips.

 

Compliance with the statute would be an administrative and technological hot mess for card networks. Not surprisingly, the banking industry has challenged the law, and the OCC has weighed in with an amicus brief.  I’m not going to address the policy merits of the Illinois statute here. Instead, my interest is the National Bank Act preemption analysis in the OCC’s brief. Although I think the OCC gets the preemption analysis correct in the end, it makes a concerning claim on the way. 

 

If You're Gonna File in Texas, You Gotta Have Your Votes in Hand

J&J’s at it again with a third talc bankruptcy filing, this time in SDTX.  To paraphrase Marx, the first time was tragedy, the second time farce, and now the third time is fubar. 

Why fubar? tl;dr is that J&J's betting the case on the purported authority of a small Mississippi plaintiffs' firm to unilaterally change the votes of its joint clients from "no" to "yes". 😮🤯

Elon's Brazilian Corporate Law Surprise

Elon Musk has just learned that Brazil doesn't give a lot of credence to the fictions of corporate asset partitioning:  affiliated companies can be liable for each other's involuntary obligations.  This shouldn't be a surprise; Mariana Pargendler's work has made clear that Brazil's got a very different approach to corporate law than the US. In particular, limited liability isn't so strongly fetishized. Now if we only had some sort of legal doctrine in the US that ignored limited liability...

Preliminary Injunctions After Harrington v. Purdue Pharma

The Supreme Court's opinion in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma left open a lot of questions about the extent of its scope. We now have one of the first opinions exploring those questions. Judge Craig Goldblatt of the Delaware bankruptcy court faced a request for a preliminary injunction in the bankruptcy of right-wing social media platform Parler. Judge Goldblatt concluded that "authority to 'extend the stay' survives Purdue Pharma." I'm skeptical. 

The Hydraulic Effect of Loper Bright Enterprises in Consumer Finance: More Regulation By Enforcement

This term's Supreme Court decisions have completely remade administrative law, both by eliminating Chevron deference and by effectively eliminating the Administrative Procedures Act's statute of limitations. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court held that as a constitutional matter federal courts could not give deference to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous statutes. And then the Court opened the door to APA challenges to virtually every existing federal regulation, no matter how old, with Corner Post Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, a statutory ruling that the APA's six-year statute of limitations runs from the date a plaintiff is allegedly injured by the regulation, rather than from the date of the regulation's finalization. That means that a business that is incorporated tomorrow has at least six years to challenge any regulation that affects it, and maybe more depending on when it is affected. In other words even New Deal or Progressive era regulations could be challenged tomorrow and there would be no deference to the agency's long-standing interpretation of the statute authorizing the regulations. I pity my colleagues who teach admin law--their course lost at least a credit hour's worth of material. Maybe they'll decide to take up commercial law....

These decisions are, taken together, a major rolling back of the administrative state. But these decisions will affect different agencies differently, and the Court's rulings may have some unintended consequences. To wit, many federal agencies have both rulemaking and enforcement powers. In some instances, enforcement is dependent on rulemaking, as the agency lacks a general statutory prohibition to enforce, but can only enforce its particular rules. The EPA is (I think) an example of this type of agency. It doesn't have a general statutory prohibition of "don't pollute." OSHA and the FDA and NLRB and Dept. of Commerce. For agencies in this category, Loper Bright Enterprises and Corner Post clip not only the agencies' rulemaking power, but also their enforcement power, because they will have to defend the rules they are enforcing. 

In other instances, however, the enforcement powers are independent of rulemaking, as there is a broad statutory prohibition that the agency can enforce without rules. This is where federal financial regulators sit.  In these cases, Loper Bright Enterprises and Corner Post will have a hydraulic effect:  agencies are going to do what they're going to do, so if they can't do it through rulemaking, they'll do it through enforcement and supervision. In other words, what the Supreme Court did was to supercharge regulation by enforcement in the financial regulatory space.

Purdue Pharma Decision: a Big Win for Mass Tort Victims

Mass tort victims won a big victory in the Supreme Court today with its 5-4 decision to reverse confirmation of the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan because it included impermissible nonconsensual releases of nondebtors. The case is a victory for tort victims not just in Purdue Pharma but across the board. The decision will not prevent the global resolution of mass torts in bankruptcy, but will simply eliminate the "bankruptcy discount."

 

Before Purdue Pharma non-debtors could piggyback on a bankruptcy case to get 100% resolution of their own liability to the debtor’s creditors based on contributing enough to get 75% of tort victims to consent. Now the price of 100% resolution will be the price necessary to get 100% of tort victims to consent and the price of 95% resolution will be the price necessary to get 95% of victims to consent, etc. In other words, non-debtors will get what they pay for, but there’s no longer a bankruptcy discount for mass tort settlements with nondebtors.  That’s a major win for tort victims.

 

Second Time as Farce: the Absurdity of the New Anti-CFPB Arguments

Karl Marx's famously quipped how historical figures appear twice, "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." So too with the legal arguments about the constitutionality of the CFPB's funding: we are firmly in farce territory at this point. 

Nevertheless, over at Ballard Spahr's Consumer Finance Monitor blog my friend Alan Kaplinsky doesn't seem to get the joke and has earnestly taken issue with my criticisms of Hal Scott's claim that the CFPB's funding is unauthorized both by statute and under the Constitution. I find the legal arguments involved here so thin that I wouldn't bother with a second blog post about them, other than that they've found a welcoming audience from some members of Congress (yes, I can hear the remarks from the peanut gallery...).  So let's go through this again.

SCOTUS National Bank Act Preemption Ruling

The Supreme Court issued an important ruling about the National Bank Act's preemption standard today that precludes broad, categorical preemption of state consumer financial laws, but instead requires a fact-specific analysis.This decision opens the way to more expansive state consumer financial regulation that affects banks.

NIL and Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy lawyers are familiar enough with issues presented but NOLs. And NILs (name, image, likeness rights) have existed for as long as the modern Bankruptcy Code. But those rights have usually come up in the context of debtors with established, valuable brands (e.g., Mike Tyson). Now college atheletes can enter into NIL deals, and for many of them the value isn't yet established and there might not even be licensing deals yet. That situation poses the question of to what extent unlicensed NIL rights are property of the bankruptcy estate, and not of the debtor?

CFPB Bitter-Enderism

Retired Harvard Law Professor Hal Scott has a curious op-ed in the Wall Street Journal suggesting that despite (or because) of the Supreme Court's recent ruling in CFPB v. CFSA that the CFPB's funding is both unauthorized by statute and unconstitutional on account of the Federal Reserve System running a deficit currently (and projected through 2027).

It's a bizarre and incorrect argument, and were it coming from anyone other than Scott it could be dismissed as harmless and uninformed flibflab, but Scott is a personage with serious financial regulatory credentials, who is very tied in to the upper crust of anti-financial regulatory circles, such that one has to wonder if this is a trial balloon for a U.S. Chamber of Commerce or Bank Policy Institute-supported challenge. 

In any event, let me quickly explain why Scott is wrong on both the statutory and constitutional arguments.

Further Thoughts on CFPB v. CFSA

I have some further thoughts on the CFPB v. CFSA decision on Bloomberg Law: decision not only benefits consumers but ultimately benefits many financial services businesses by ensuring both a level of stability in regulation and the preservation of the "legal infrastructure" that the CFPB has created over the past 13 years, such as safe harbors, inflation adjustments, and advisory opinions. 

 

Not All Third-Party Releases Are the Same

My friend Professor Tony Casey has been the most vocal academic defender of non-consensual non-debtor releases in bankruptcy. I obviously disagree with Tony on both the legality and policy substance, but Tony's repeatedly taken me to task in scholarship (here and here) and various social media platforms (here and here) for having supposedly changed my view of the issue.

Tony's charge that I've flip-flopped is based on a 2019 blog post in which I defended then presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren's work in Dow Corning, which Tony thinks is a non-consensual non-debtor release case. 

Unfortunately, Tony's misread Dow Corning and therefore sees a contradiction where none exists.  I have never taken issue with consensual releases of creditors' claims against non-debtors as part of a global settlement (although what constitutes adequate consent is a separate issue). Instead, my concern has always been with mandatory, non-consensual release of claims against non-debtors. Dow Corning released third-parties, but it was not a non-consensual release case. Unlike in, say, Purdue Pharma, where the non-debtor releases purport to bind all creditors irrespective of consent, the dissenters in Dow Corning were allowed to opt-out and pursue their remedies.

CFPB v. CFSA Analysis

The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the CFPB's funding mechanism in its 7-2 decision in CFPB v. CFSA. Although I can't say I love the opinion's reasoning, the Court got to the right result, as Patricia McCoy and I urged in an amicus brief. The ruling does have some interesting omissions and politics, but its ultimately impact will be the normalization of the CFPB, something that's good for consumers and businesses alike.

FTX Bankruptcy Plan: What's with the "Consensus" Interest Rate?

The FTX bankruptcy plan proposed today has gotten a lot of attention for the fact that it is promising to pay (over time) 118% of allowed customer claims. That's not quite as great as it sounds given that customer claims were locked in at their November 2022 values. Getting 118% isn't nearly as good as getting 300% (roughly the appreciation of Bitcoin since November 2022), but it's a heckuva lot better than getting the typical "cents on the dollar" bankruptcy treatment.

But there is something here that could be controversial:  the payment of post-petition interest on customer claims at a 9% "Consensus Rate." (The 118% is with two years of 9% interest.)

The Texas Three-Step

Johnson & Johnson is preparing to take a third crack at addressing its toxic talc liabilities through bankruptcy in what we might call a "Texas Three-Step". And as with J&J's previous attempts, this one has some pretty glaring issues.Yet because of J&J's ability to forum shop and even picks its judge, it will likely be able to sidestep adjudication of many of the issues and avoid appellate review entirely. Instead, J&J's strategy is going to be to ram a seriously deficient plan through with the assistance of its hand-picked judge and then avoid appellate review through the equitable mootness doctrine. It's a strategy that might work. And if it does, it is a sign that the bankruptcy system is seriously broken.

The New Usury: The Ability-to-Repay Revolution in Consumer Finance

I have a new article out in the George Washington Law Review, entitled The New Usury: The Ability-to-Repay Revolution in Consumer Finance. The abstract is below:

American consumer credit regulation is in the midst of a doctrinal revolution. Usury laws, for centuries the mainstay of consumer credit regulation, have been repealed, preempted, or otherwise undermined. At the same time, changes in the structure of the consumer credit marketplace have weakened the traditional alignment of lender and borrower interests. As a result, lenders cannot be relied upon to avoid making excessively risky loans out of their own self-interest.

Two new doctrinal approaches have emerged piecemeal to fill the regulatory gap created by the erosion of usury laws and lenders’ self-interested restraint: a revived unconscionability doctrine and ability-to-repay requirements. Some courts have held loan contracts unconscionable based on excessive price terms, even if the loan does not violate the applicable usury law. Separately, for many types of credit products, lenders are now required to evaluate the borrower’s repayment capacity and to lend only within such capacity. The nature of these ability-to-repay requirements varies considerably, however, by product and jurisdiction. This Article terms these doctrinal developments collectively as the “New Usury.”

The New Usury represents a shift from traditional usury law’s bright-line rules to fuzzier standards like unconscionability and ability-to-repay. Although there are benefits to this approach, it has developed in a fragmented and haphazard manner. Drawing on the lessons from the New Usury, this Article calls for a more comprehensive and coherent approach to consumer credit price regulation through a federal ability-to-repay requirement for all consumer credit products coupled with product-specific regulatory safe harbors, a combination that offers the best balance of functional consumer protection and business certainty.

 

Stuffing the Chapter 11 Ballot Box with "Junk" Claims

A recent, disturbing, and truly scandalous development in Chapter 11 mass tort cases is the phenomenon of debtors trying to stuff the ballot box with "junk" claims, that is claims that should by all lights be disallowed as unenforceable and therefore ineligible to vote on a plan. Debtors have recognized that they can strategically co-opt part of the mass tort bar to push through plans:  debtors offer small payments to claims that ought to be disallowed (and thus to the attorneys representing those claims on contingency fee) in order to get those claimants to vote in favor of a plan that forces a low-ball payment on the legitimate tort claimants. While debtors have to pay a bit for the "junk" claims' votes, they come out ahead in the end because by flooding the electorate with the junk claims, they can overwhelm the voting power of the legitimate claims and stick the legitimate claimants with a much lower payment than otherwise.  

Student Loan Forgiveness

Sometimes it’s helpful to read media stories on separate topics against each other because of the disconnects they underscore. That’s been on my mind today with federal student loan debt.

Predictably Reliable

Law360 has a nice Q&A with Chief Judge Michael Kaplan of the New Jersey bankruptcy court. The interviewer rightly asked Judge Kaplan why New Jersey has recently become a Chapter 11 filing destination. Judge Kaplan's answer is telling:  

What do filers look for? They look for predictability, and we have a body of work that you can look at to get a sense, whether it be third-party releases, whether it be bidding procedures, whether it be outlook on examiners or mediation. I believe we have really gained exposure, probably initially with the LTL Management case. Not my work on that case as much as our clerk's office, our chambers, how we can handle a deluge of filings and the multiple committees and the scheduling.

Judge Kaplan is partially right here. Filers are absolutely looking for predictability. But that's only half of the story. They are looking for a venue that is predictably favorable. If you're shopping around for third-party releases, you aren't going to file in the 5th Circuit, where you can predictably not get one. As I've explained at length, the predictability trope that is sometimes used to defend venue shopping is really about predictability giving the debtor the outcomes it wants on major issues: appointment of an examiner, third-party releases, retention of right to investigate avoidance actions, etc.  And with LTL Management, particularly with his denial of the motion to dismiss in LTL 1.0 and then reluctant granting of the motion to dismiss in LTL 2.0, Judge Kaplan made clear the sort of reception large debtor firms could expect in Trenton.  One might even say it's predictable. 

Securitization Trusts Are Subject to the Consumer Financial Protection Act

The CFPB won a significant case this week that could shake things up in the securitization world. In CFPB v. National Collegiate Master Student Loan Trust, the 3d Circuit held that a securitization trust is a "covered person," for the purposes of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, putting it within the enforcement ambit of the CFPB.  While securitization trusts themselves are basically passive holding entities for loans, they contract with third-parties (servicers) to manage the loans. That contracting was enough for the Third Circuit to find that the trusts are "engaged" in "extending credit or servicing loans," and language in the opinion suggests that merely holding the loans would be sufficient. The opinion means that securitization trusts—and therefore securitization investors—face the possibility of liability for servicer wrong-doing.

The Proposed Credit Card Interchange Settlement

The Bleak House of Cards Litigation over credit card interchange fees still isn't ending, but it's hit an interesting inflection point. We're nearly two decades into the case and over a decade from the original proposed settlement. Now there's a proposed injunctive relief class settlement. The settlement's headline figure is $30 billion in savings, but on closer inspection, it's a farcically weak settlement. Credit card interchange fees after the settlement will be 25% higher than when the litigation began. That sort of result is what's called litigation failure.

A Trump Bankruptcy: Further Thoughts

A lot of the debtor-creditor relationship can be characterized by creditors threatening to push debtors out the window and debtors threatening to jump.  Ted Janger reminded me of this defenestration dynamic today regarding the Trump civil fraud judgment.  In my previous post, my assumption had been that the New York Attorney General’s goal was to foreclose on some of Trump’s marquee properties, but Ted suggested that the goal might simply be to trigger cross-default clauses, compounding Trump’s liquidity problems and forcing him into bankruptcy. In other words, bankruptcy might be the goal of the New York Attorney General, rather than a defensive strategy for Trump.  “I’ll jump,” “No, I’ll push.” 

A Trump Bankruptcy?

Will Donald Trump file for bankruptcy? It's certainly a possibility as Trump struggles to come up with a supersedeas bond for staying the NY Attorney General's civil fraud judgment against him while he takes an appeal.

I don’t know the strength of Trump’s possible arguments for an appeal, but the legal arguments might be beside the point. If Trump wins the election, the entire dynamic of the litigation changes. Is the New York Attorney General really going to enforce a judgment against the President-elect, particularly one who is likely to be vengeful once in office? Maybe, given that we will likely be facing an period of extended lawfare, but the calculus for enforcement or settlement shifts in Trump’s favor if he wins election. That means that Trump’s best move might be trying to run the clock until Election Day:  7 months and 17 days.  And maybe not even that long. The optics of pursuing the collection on the eve of the bankruptcy will make it look very political and might generate sympathy for Trump. So Trump might only need to run the clock, say, 6 months. That’s where bankruptcy comes in.

Alabama Supreme Court and Section 366

By sheer coincidence, the first problem I taught in my financial restructuring class today was about a bankrupt fertility clinic that is behind on its electric bill and is having trouble coming up with the funds to provide adequate assurances to the power company that it will pay its future bills: if the electricity is cut off, all the frozen zygotes and embryos will thaw and become unviable. 

I found myself wondering how this would play out in Alabama now. Suppose the debtor could not provide adequate assurances. Would the DIP/trustee or utility face some sort of liability for wrongful death if what one of my students termed "the biological material" melted?  I assume the Barton doctrine would provide some level of protection to the DIP or trustee. (I also assume the bankruptcy judge would have broad immunity for his or her official acts.) I'm not sure if the power company could even have liability, but given the potential scale of liability, it's probably not worthwhile cutting off the power, even if the risk of liability is very small.

I know that similar sorts of issues can emerge in hospital or nursing home bankruptcies, where there are patients who have to be transferred to other facilities in the event that the debtor is liquidating, but that's addressed by 11 USC 704(a)(12). Maybe an embryo that is frozen at a fertility clinic is now a "patient" at a "health care facility." Otherwise, I'm not sure what would create a duty for the trustee/DIP to preserve the embryos. 

What Is a Wire Transfer?

Heads up payment nerds: we have what promises to be the most interesting payments litigation involving a Citibank wire transfer since...the last payments litigation involving a Citibank wire transfer.

In the latest case, the NYAG has sued Citibank for violating the Electronic Fund Transfer Act in connection with wire transfer transactions for consumer customers. The EFTA offers consumers substantial protection against unauthorized electronic fund transfers, both in terms of process and substantive liability limitations. The  NYAG alleges Citibank has not been providing these required protections to consumers who have had their accounts drained by unauthorized wire transfer orders.  

Now you might be saying, "I feel bad for the consumers, but come on, everyone knows that the EFTA doesn't apply to wire transfers." And you might even point to the EFTA definition of an "electronic fund transfer" as excluding "any transfer of funds, other than those processed by automated clearinghouse, made by a financial institution on behalf of a consumer by means of a service that transfers funds held at either Federal Reserve banks or other depository institutions and which is not designed primarily to transfer funds on behalf of a consumer." And you'd be right—both the NYAG and Citibank agree that the EFTA does not apply to wire transfers.  The issue in the case is "what is the wire transfer?"

The CFPB's Proposed Overdraft Regulation

The CFPB proposed overdraft regulation came out today. It's a big deal. If it becomes effective, it will dramatically reduce overdraft fees at large banks.

Currently fees for “courtesy” overdraft—where the financial institution is not contractually obligated to allow the overdraft, as opposed to contractual overdraft lines of credit—are not “finance charges,” so the overdraft is not “credit” for purposes of the Truth in Lending Act/Regulation Z because credit requires either a finance charge or a requirement of repayment in over four installments. That means that TILA disclosure requirements do not currently apply to any courtesy overdrafts. 

The CFPB is proposing changing this for overdrafts that don't fall within a dollar amount safe harbor.