Bankruptcy & Creditors' Rights

Farella Braun + Martel's bankruptcy and creditors' rights practice handles all aspects of corporate bankruptcy, reorganizations and debt restructuring.  Our team works closely with key practice groups, such as insurance, intellectual property, complex litigation, ERISA and tax to provide customized, multi-disciplinary assistance and advice to each of our clients.

Our bankruptcy team has developed niche specialties in insurance company insolvency, pension and employee benefits in bankruptcy, technology company restarts, asset and company acquisitions and sales out of bankruptcy, environmental issues in bankruptcy, avoiding power litigation and bankruptcy appeals.  Although we pride ourselves on these practice specialties, our bankruptcy team represents our clients from the negotiating table to the court room.  We provide cost-effective, practical assistance in bankruptcy litigation and matters requiring creative legal approaches to minimize future bankruptcy risks.  Among other things, we:

• Manage litigation of large and complex bankruptcy adversary proceedings.
• Represent specialized creditors' committees, such as Section 1114 retired employee committees in complex bankruptcies.
• Advise clients on structuring and drafting settlements, judgments, joint ventures, licenses and other transactions to avoid bankruptcy risks and maximize client leverage if the other party later files bankruptcy.
• Take advantage of unique, specialized expertise on medical and pension benefits, intellectual property rights, environmental issues and alternative dispute resolution in bankruptcy.
• Assist in buying assets and companies out of bankruptcy.
• Represent creditors and other parties in interest in Chapter 11 and business Chapter 7 cases.
• Litigate bankruptcy appeals, including dealing with complicated issues of finality of judgments, stays, and preventing appeals from becoming moot.