United State Bankruptcy Court

This collection is the first comprehensive selection of readings focusing on corporate bankruptcy. Its main purpose is to explore the nature and efficiency of corporate reorganization using interdisciplinary approaches drawn from law, economics, business, and finance. Substantive areas covered include the role of credit, creditors' implicit bargains, nonbargaining features of bankruptcy, workouts of agreements, alternatives to bankruptcy, and proceedings in countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Japan. The Honorable Richard A. Posner, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, offers a foreword to the collection.

In 1982 Johns-Manville, a major asbestos manufacturer, declares itself insolvent to avoid paying claims resulting from exposure to its products. A year later, Continental Airlines, one of the top ten carriers in the United States, claims a deficit when the union resists plans to cut labor costs. Later still, oil powerhouse Texaco cries broke rather than pay damages resulting from a courtroom defeat by archrival Pennzoil. Bankruptcy, once a term that sent shudders up a manager's spine, is now becoming a potent weapon in the corporate arsenal. In his timely and challenging study, Kevin Delaney explores this profound change in our legal landscape, where corporations with billions of dollars in assets use bankruptcy to achieve specific political and organizational objectives. As a consequence, bankruptcy court is rapidly becoming an arena in which crucial social issues are resolved: How and when will people dying of asbestos poisoning be compensated? Can companies unilaterally break legally negotiated labor contracts? What are the ethical and legal rules of the corporate takeover game? In probing the Chapter 11 bankruptcies of Johns-Manville, Frank Lorenzo's Continental Airlines, and Texaco, Delaney shows that more and more, an array of powerful actors--corporations, commercial creditors, auditors, bond rating agencies and investment bankers--are coming to view bankruptcy as a legitimate business strategy. In each situation, the choice of bankruptcy by these corporate giants was directly influenced by the surrounding business community. In the case of Johns-Manville, carrying appropriate insurance did not prevent its twenty insurance companies from refusing to pay claims. Thanks to shrewdplanning and cooperation from Continental's creditors, not only was the airline able to continue flying in the first week of Chapter 11, but it could also offer the lowest cross-country fare in the market.