bankruptcy court

Celsius Executives Cashed Out Shortly Before Bankruptcy

Two executives of beleaguered cryptocurrency lender Celsius appear to have withdrawn millions of their own investments before the company suspended withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy, new court filings show.

According to a statement of financial affairs filed in New York bankruptcy court late Wednesday, former CEO Alex Mashinsky and former chief strategy officer Daniel Leon made multiple withdrawals from their cryptocurrency accounts in May, days before the company halted all such transactions.

Mashinsky and related parties withdrew approximately $10 million worth of bitcoin, ether, USD coin and Celsius’ CEL token, according to the documents. Leon may have withdrawn between $2 and $7 million.

Forbes previously reported that CTO Nuke Goldstein also made withdrawals.

His lawyers, however, disputed this interpretation of the transactions listed in the filings. “The reality is that Mr. Goldstein did not withdraw even one dollar in the four weeks prior to the pause—to the contrary, he deposited over $90,000 in CEL tokens in late May, just three weeks before the pause,” wrote Avi Weitzman and Leo Tsao of the Paul

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October 7, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Executive bonuses at opioid firm Endo were ‘excessive’ and ‘secret’ before bankruptcy, state AGs say

Seven state attorneys general and a court-appointed bankruptcy federal watchdog are opposing up to $94 million in pre-bankruptcy bonuses paid to top executives and other insiders at opioid drug firm Endo International in Chester County, court documents show.

The bonuses to the highest executives were doled out in “secret” and drain financial resources of the money-losing Endo available for victims of the Malvern company’s addictive pills, according to state attorneys general who filed their objections as a committee on Wednesday in New York.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is one of the seven whose court filing called the top executive pre-bankruptcy bonuses “excessive.”

Endo, facing mounds of litigation over its alleged role in the national opioid crisis, filed for bankruptcy protection on Aug. 16. The Inquirer first reported on the bonuses days later.

U.S. Trustee William Harrington, the watchdog, said in a separate court filing earlier this month that Endo paid $94 million in bonuses to top executives and other insiders in the months prior to the bankruptcy filing, while Endo’s restructuring plan leaves only $27.4 million initially for individual opioid victims who are not state entities.

Endo has “provided virtually no information, much less sufficient information” to evaluate the

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September 24, 2022 by ATTORNEY

Troubled Fones Cliffs property listed for bankruptcy sale

Nearly 1,000 acres of land at Virginia’s famous Fones Cliffs on the Rappahannock River will be put up for auction at a bankruptcy sale.

A listing by New York-based Auction Advisors puts the minimum bid for the property as $4.25 million in an auction to be held Nov. 3.  

The 977-acre undeveloped property, which is currently owned by Virginia True Corporation, has been embroiled in difficulties since 2017, when the company purchased the property for $12 million from long-time owners the Diatomite Corporation of America. 

Virginia True planned to develop a luxury golf course and resort on the property. In November 2017, however, Richmond County ordered the company to stop work after it cleared more than 13 acres of forested land near the cliffs without a permit. A lack of required stormwater controls at the site led to extensive erosion and landslides.

Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality subsequently issued three notices of violation to Virginia True, and the lawsuit was later referred to the Office of the Attorney General. 

A document filed in bankruptcy court this August lists the company owing the state $200,000 related to “governmental enforcement action.” 

A four-mile stretch of striking white cliffs on the

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September 18, 2022 by ATTORNEY

3M awaits bankruptcy ruling that could sink litigation tactic

3M’s attempt to block jury trials of more than 230,000 lawsuits accusing it of harming U.S. soldiers faces a key test this week in front of a federal judge in Indianapolis.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jeffrey Graham is set to consider a temporary halt to the lawsuits so that 3M and its bankrupt subsidiary, Aearo Technologies, can try to settle the claims, most of which have been filed by veterans who say the combat arms earplugs left them with hearing damage.

Graham’s decision will echo across the offices of other firms facing massive numbers of product liability lawsuits, Harvard Law School professor Jared Ellias said in an interview.

“To the extent 3M suffers a setback here it’s likely to set off alarm bells in other corporate boardrooms of companies that want to take advantage of the bankruptcy system,” Ellias said.

The Aearo case uses an increasingly popular strategy in which profitable companies use insolvency proceedings to force settlement talks with victims of allegedly harmful products.

Johnson & Johnson and lumber giant Georgia-Pacific have also put units into bankruptcy with the same goal of ending their litigation woes in one place instead of fighting thousands of trials around the country.

Fighting each

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August 26, 2022 by ATTORNEY

3M earplug bankruptcy creates “corrosive” tension with other courts, attorney says

The 3M logo is seen at its global headquarters in Maplewood, Minnesota. REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi

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(Reuters) – A 3M Co subsidiary on Wednesday criticized the way federal courts have handled 290,000 consolidated lawsuits over allegedly defective earplugs it made for the U.S. military, saying that the “broken” legal system allowed claims to balloon and threatened the company’s ability to settle them.

3M subsidiary Aearo Technologies LLC pressed for, but did not get, a court order that would protect its parent company from the lawsuits at its first hearing in U.S. bankruptcy court in Indianapolis. Instead, it reached a more limited agreement with plaintiffs to pause work for three weeks, interrupting witness depositions and expert reports scheduled in the lawsuits, which have been consolidated in the largest-ever multidistrict litigation (MDL) in U.S. court.

Plaintiffs sued Aearo and 3M over the company’s Combat Arms Earplugs version 2 (CAEv2), claiming they are defective and damaged their hearing. The cases ballooned to a peak of more than 290,000 last year and now account for nearly one-third of all cases pending in all federal courts, according to a court filing.

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August 12, 2022 by ATTORNEY
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