SENDIBEL TRADING v. DE VENEZUELA (2025)
Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, New York
Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Lyle E. Frank, J.), entered on or about November 13, 2024, which, insofar as appealed from, granted plaintiff’s motion to deem service sufficient and complete, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
In the note agreement, defendant Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (the Issuer) waived its right to be served pursuant to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) (28 USC § 1608[b]). Section 3.01(x) of the agreement states the Issuer is not “entitled to any right of immunity ․ from suit, court jurisdiction, judgment, attachment ․, set-off or execution of a judgment or from any other legal process or remedy relating to the obligations of the Issuer except for the mandatory notice required pursuant to” a Venezuelan law that is not at issue. In section 9.15(c), the Issuer waived “any immunity ․ from any legal process” and “agree[d] not to assert ․ any claim ․ that it is immune from any legal process (whether through service of notice ․ or otherwise).” Section 9.15(d), in which the Issuer and defendant PDVSA Petróleo, S.A. (the Guarantor) irrevocably appointed Corporation Service Company (CSC) as their agent for service of process, states, “Nothing herein shall in any way be deemed to limit the ability of the ․ Noteholders [such as plaintiff] ․ to serve any such legal process in any other manner permitted by applicable law.” The applicable law is that of New York.
CVS unit must pay $290 million in drug whistleblower lawsuit, judge rules
23andMe bankruptcy filing sparks privacy fears as DNA data of millions goes up for sale
With genetic testing company 23andMe filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and courting bidders, the DNA data of millions of users is up for sale.
A Silicon Valley stalwart since 2006, 23andMe has steadily amassed a database of people’s fundamental genetic information under the promise of helping them understand their disposition to diseases and potentially connecting with relatives.
*Source: Kevin Collier
Immigrants, Accidents and Lawsuit Loans: Does NY Need New Rules?
It took eight months after construction worker Javier Bances Carranza injured himself in a fall for his lawyer to try to make him feel supported, but it was too late. When the lawyer learned Carranza intended to switch his negligence lawsuit against his employer to a more attentive law firm, according to Carranza’s affidavit, his current law firm texted him asking for explanations and threatened to “damage” his case. “I refused them and blocked their phone numbers,” he said.
A few days later, Carranza stated, one of the lawyer’s paralegals came to his Bronx home, insisting he return and “she also offered me loans for $40,000 and then for $50,000, which I rejected.”
*Source: Richard Korman
Retailer Forever 21 files for bankruptcy for second time in 6 years
Forever 21 has 350 stores remaining in the US; liquidation sales to begin during bankruptcy proceedings. Forever 21’s U.S. operating company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday, marking the second time in six years. F21 OpCo made the move after the retailer, once known for affordable, on-trend fashions among teenagers and younger adults, was unable to find a buyer for its roughly 350 U.S. stores. With most stores inside malls, the retailer says it was crippled by dwindling foot traffic and increased competition from online retailers.
Neiman Marcus, a Symbol of Luxury, Files for Bankruptcy
In March 2019, the luxury retailer Neiman Marcus opened its first outpost in Manhattan. Spread over three floors and 188,000 square feet, the store was an anchor tenant of the gleaming Hudson Yards development and, the company’s chief executive said, a new kind of “retail theater.” It boasted in-house aestheticians, live cooking and mixology demonstrations, and fitting rooms complete with interactive touch screens.
The executive, Geoffroy van Raemdonck, was about a year into the job and had already hired a slew of new executives, including a chief for the company’s other jewel in New York, Bergdorf Goodman. Each of the hires, he said in a late November interview with The New York Times, has “a passion for transforming our business.”
*Source: Vanessa Friedman and Sapna Maheshwari
Time is running out for JCPenney
The clock is ticking for JCPenney.
J.Crew has filed for bankruptcy
J.Crew Group, which operates the J.Crew and Madewell brands, has become the first national US retailer to file for bankruptcy protection since the coronavirus pandemic forced a wave of store closures.
*Source: Updated 9:52 AM ET, Mon May 4, 2020
Bumble Bee files for bankruptcy after $25 million fine for tuna price fixing
Tuna maker Bumble Bee Foods said Thursday that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with an agreement from Taiwan-based FCF Fishery, its largest creditor, to purchase its assets for roughly $925 million.
The bankruptcy proceedings are meant to reduce Bumble Bee’s debt burden caused by “recent and significant legal challenges” and help facilitate the sale. In 2017, the company pleaded guilty to price fixing and was fined $25 million for forming a cartel with Chicken of the Sea and Starkist. It still owes $17 million to the U.S. Department of Justice, according to its bankruptcy filing.
Bumble Bee is also facing civil lawsuits related to price fixing. Earlier this year, the company confidentially settled with Sysco and U.S. Foods.
In addition to its legal troubles, Bumble Bee is grappling with the declining popularity of packaged tuna. Consumption of canned tuna has dropped 42 percent per capita from the last 30 years through 2016, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
FCF’s bid includes $275 million in cash and $638.5 million in debt. Even if both parties agree to the sale, the transaction would be subject to receiving higher or better offers while the company is in bankruptcy protection. London-based private-equity firm Lion Capital bought Bumble Bee in 2010 for $980 million.
Despite the bankruptcy proceedings, Bumble Bee expects that its U.S. and Canadian operations will continue uninterrupted.
*Source: MSN Money, Tuesday November 22, 2019: Amelia Lucas
America’s middle class is addicted to a new kind of credit
The payday-loan business was in decline. Regulators were circling, storefronts were vanishing and investors were abandoning the industry’s biggest companies en masse.
Yet today, just a few years later, many of the same subprime lenders that specialized in the debt are promoting an almost equally onerous type of credit.
It’s called the online installment loan, a form of debt with much longer maturities but often the same sort of crippling, triple-digit interest rates. If the payday loan’s target audience is the nation’s poor, then the installment loan is geared to all those working-class Americans who have seen their wages stagnate and unpaid bills pile up in the years since the Great Recession.
In just five years, online installment loans have gone from being a relatively niche offering to a red-hot industry. Subprime borrowers now collectively owe about $50 billion on installment products, according to credit reporting firm TransUnion. In the process, they’re helping transform the way that a large swathe of the country accesses debt. And they have done so without attracting the kind of public and regulatory backlash that hounded the payday loan.
*Source: MSN Money, Tuesday October 29, 2019: Christopher Maloney and Adam Tempkin
“Can You Afford To Go Bankrupt?”
Onerous living expenses, a fiercely competitive business world, the devastating recession, and reliance on credit are all contributing factors to the rapid rise in the number of people who see bankruptcy as their best — or only — option.
In 1960, about 110,000 Americans filed for bankruptcy. That number swelled to nearly 1.8 million by 2005.
Bankruptcy laws were designed to facilitate a “fresh start” by absolving or significantly reducing an insurmountable debt, enabling a person to regain their financial footing.
The promise of a fresh start certainly appeals to those who see no light at the end of their financial tunnel, but the rapid rise in filings also led to a series of reforms that have rendered bankruptcy a more complex process.
Congress passed the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005 at the behest of credit card companies and other creditors who felt abused by the system. The act tightened many of the qualifying criteria for bankruptcy protection.
“In the 1990s, I dealt with a couple who earned about $1 million a year facing a $10 million lawsuit,” says Tuvia (Ted) Mozes, Esq., a Spring Valley,New York, attorney who has dealt with bankruptcy law for over two decades. “They successfully declared bankruptcy and were fully relieved of liability despite the millions that they were going to earn in subsequent years. Today, they would never get away with that.”
The tougher criteria have increased the onus on bankruptcy filers to prove that their accumulated debt and claims of inability to pay are not abusive. In addition to filing additional documentation and paperwork, the law also requires filers to attend a debt counseling session before pursuing bankruptcy. Attorneys have typically upped their fees due to the more demanding requirements. The total cost of a personal bankruptcy filing, including court filing and attorney fees, is in the $2,000 to $3,000 range (when there are no complications).
Consumer advocates opposed the 2005 law from the outset, claiming that it unfairly shut legitimate filers out of the process. A recent study submitted to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) claims that each year, between 200,000 and 1 million Americans do not file for bankruptcy because they cannot afford the costs. The study also noted two ironies: a spike in filings after taxpayers receive some extra cash from their tax refunds, as well as the fact that today’s bankruptcy filers typically have the means to do so. “It ends up being the relatively better off, or middle class consumers, who can actually afford to file and the people with lower incomes can’t afford to file,” says study coauthor Jialan Wang.
The reform act accomplished its goal, at least initially. In 2006, bankruptcy filings dropped by over 60 percent from the previous year, to under 700,000. However, the numbers quickly rose to the 1.4 to 1.6 million a year range in recent years, just a notch lower than during the pre-reform era.
Did the reform act root out only the bad apples?
For the most part, consumers with legitimately insurmountable debt are able to satisfactorily complete the process even today. Mr. Mozes attributes some of the drop-off in bankruptcy filings to the greater availability of other options for debt relief, such as credit card settlements, loan modifications, and short sales for people with homes that are underwater. Manhattan bankruptcy attorney Robert M. Fox, Esq., says that he has indeed noticed that recent filers tend to be more professional and “white collar” than in previous years, but he attributes that to the fact that these people may have staved off bankruptcy for several years by using their savings and other assets, which have by now been depleted. “As a rule of thumb,” says Mr. Fox, “you generally don’t consider bankruptcy unless you have over $10,000 in unsecured dischargeable debt, and the fees will usually total less than if you try settling that debt any other way.”
*Source: Mishpacha, Can You Afford To Go Bankrupt?, Tuesday June 12, 2012
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