Privilege, with some Texas hot sauce *

USA - September 13 2012
Yesterday (September 12, 2012) the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas provided an excellent lesson on the need to know what sauce is going into the stew that governs privileged communications in bankruptcy proceedings.

Co-authors: Michael Coolican, Gregory W. Nye.

Curiosity safe on Mars, forward contracts safe under section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code *

USA - August 6 2012
As NASA engineers breathe a sigh of relief after the “seven minutes of terror” that was the rover Curiosity’s landing on Mars, recipients of payments under commodity forward contracts can—at least in the Fifth Circuit—rest assured that agreements that meet the basic definition of forward contract contained in section 101(25) of the Bankruptcy Code will be protected from preference liability should their counterparties find themselves in bankruptcy.

Co-authors: Laura L. Venta.