What A Bankruptcy Might Mean For WeWork’s Tenants

According to a story posted in the Wall Street Journal on August 24, several owners of WeWork’s secured debt totaling $1.2 billion are holding what were called “preliminary talks about the company’s restructuring options and indicated that they would support a plan for WeWork to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy.” However, the creditors who include BlackRock, King Street Capital and Brigade Capital, have not yet provided specific proposals concerning a bankruptcy or debt restructuring to WeWork, as per sources that were not identified.

What does this news mean for WeWork tenants, known as members? This is a long run prospect. Nobody knows exactly what will happen, and we are just at the start of a process that will have many twists and turns. However, let’s take a look at what might happen if a bankruptcy plan is negotiated with WeWork’s secured creditors by working through some of the alternatives if WeWork tries to reorganize as an ongoing company. To do so I consulted Eric Haber, general counsel for my firm Wharton Property Advisors who is also a bankruptcy attorney.

A Potential Bankruptcy Scenario

Under a potential bankruptcy reorganization plan,

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August 26, 2023 by ATTORNEY

3 California Hospitals Declared Bankruptcy This Year. Health Chains Could Keep Them Alive

3 California Hospitals Declared Bankruptcy This Year. Health Chains Could Keep Them Alive

Madera is also awaiting another $5 million in state funding that was granted in last year’s budget but placed on hold when the hospital closed.

In a letter outlining its terms (PDF), Adventist Health said it will require at least $55 million to fund staffing, supplies, maintenance, training and services in the first year, and another $30 million in the second year. Madera Community Hospital would have to pay Adventist a management fee.

In exchange, the health system would provide its management expertise and personnel to support Madera’s reopening. According to the proposal, Adventist would have the option to purchase the hospital after three years.

3 California Hospitals Declared Bankruptcy This Year. Health Chains Could Keep Them Alive
Outlines of the Madera Community Hospital sign being covered by a tarp at the Emergency Room entrance of the hospital on Jan. 2, 2023. Madera County Sheriff Tyson Pogue announced a state of emergency for the county when the hospital shut its doors due to bankruptcy. (Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local)

Paolinelli said a management agreement is the hospital’s best bet at reopening. It has not found a buyer for a straightforward sale. Paolinelli said she has not discussed with Adventist whether she will stay on as head of the hospital.

Adventist Health has experience

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August 23, 2023 by ATTORNEY

Discharging Student Loans in Bankruptcy Show Mixed Results

Alista Lineburg is not a lawyer, but she assumed the role when she couldn’t find one to help her discharge $146,000 of federal student debt in bankruptcy. The process requires a separate lawsuit against the government, something that many lawyers refuse to take on given the time, expense and difficulty of winning.

Ms. Lineburg, 49, knows this all too well. Even when the bankruptcy court tried to assign her counsel, there were no takers. “The attorney called and she said, ‘You can’t win this,’” Ms. Lineburg recalled.

So she pressed on, alone.

And, despite the odds, she won her case.

“I feel like I can finally get ahead,” said Ms. Lineburg, who lives in Fairport Harbor, Ohio. She was laid off from her information technology job in June, just two months after clearing her decades-old debt, from an undergraduate degree and a master’s in business administration.

Unlike credit card, medical and other consumer debts, student loans don’t automatically disappear in bankruptcy. Debtors need to take an extra legal step — both challenging and costly — known as an adversary proceeding.

But more people in bankruptcy are beginning to use a legal process introduced in November by the Biden administration that

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August 22, 2023 by ATTORNEY

Former News-Press Employees Ponder What Bankruptcy Means for Backpay | Local News

Former News-Press Employees Ponder What Bankruptcy Means for Backpay | Local News

To some past Santa Barbara News-Press employees who are owed money for labor violations, the Ampersand Publishing bankruptcy filing feels like a ploy to avoid paying.

A National Labor Relations Board case has stretched on more than 15 years. News-Press owner Wendy McCaw’s company was found liable and ordered to pay employees $2.2 million, but the payments haven’t been made.

About 25 employees are listed among the hundreds of creditors in the Chapter 7 bankruptcy documents filed last week by Ampersand Publishing, parent company of the News-Press.

“We’ve been told they’re still trying to make Wendy pay up at least what she owes all of her former employees and whatever employees were left, so we’ll see what happens,” former News-Press sports editor and columnist Mark Patton told Noozhawk.

“It would be kind of the ultimate insult if this bankruptcy goes through in a building she owns, and she says she does not have enough to pay employees. It’s kind of a sick irony.”

The NLRB ordered the newspaper company to pay Teamsters Union employees for losses from discontinued merit pay raises and using non-union workers at the company, and backpay to Dennis Moran and Richard Mineards who were unfairly

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August 21, 2023 by ATTORNEY

Girardi Keese Trustee Countersued by Former Firm Attorney

A former California State Bar president countersued the trustee for the Girardi Keese LLP bankruptcy estate in a fight over recovering fees for creditors of the defunct firm.

Howard Miller, an intellectual property attorney, countersued Chapter 7 trustee Elissa Miller claiming indemnity, including reimbursement for costs incurred under California Labor Code Section 2802. The law requires California employers pay for “all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer, even though unlawful, unless the employee, at the time of obeying the directions, believed them to be unlawful.”

  • “All of the conduct for which the Complaint seeks to impose liability upon Howard Miller is conduct which occurred in the course and scope of his work at Girardi Keese and which was done exclusively to benefit Girardi Keese and with the express agreement and oftentimes at the express request of Girardi Keese,” the countersuit filed Aug. 11 said
  • Howard Miller was brought into Girardi Keese in 2002 and left at age 80 in January 2018, the filing said
  • The bankruptcy trustee sued Miller last January amid a slew
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August 19, 2023 by ATTORNEY
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