Bankruptcy

E-Everything Going Dark

Posted on November 13, 2008
For those last 2 remaining readers left after all this time, E-Everything is going dark, fini, no mas. Even though these dark economic times should be the golden days of the modern bankruptcy era, the only thing that can truly counted on these days is change...

E-Everything Going Dark

Posted on May 02, 2008
For those last 2 remaining readers left after all this time, E-Everything is going dark, fini, no mas. Even though these dark economic times should be the golden days of the modern bankruptcy era, the only thing that can truly counted on these days is change...

Slips Neatly Beneath the Robe: CyberControls Links to Pocket Guide on E-Discovery for Judges

Posted on January 16, 2008
Despite the occasional pleas otherwise, I try not to provide too many free plugs for vendors, but the good folks at CyberControls warrant an exception to the rule. (Make sure and check out their White Papers section). The e-newsletter they put out is always informative without being pretentious...

Federal Rule of Evidence 502 and the Bankruptcy Lawyer

Posted on December 18, 2007
At long last, proposed Federal Rule of Evidence 502 has been introduced to the Senate as S.2450. In a nutshell, FRE 502 is intended to reduce the likelihood of waiver of attorney-client privilege and work product in an age where even simple litigation can involve thousands of "pages" of documents, meta-data and data-enabled doughnuts...

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Friendly Reminder about Bankruptcy Rule 9037...

Posted on December 14, 2007
Now that December 1 has come and gone, and another set of amendments of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure has become effective, time for a belated reminder that Bankruptcy Rule 9037 has been adopted. For those of you who, like me, have been too busy filing amended pleadings to replace outdated Official Forms and creating notice pleadings for small business case financial disclosures, it is time to turn your attention to 9037...

The Mitchell Report: Moral Bankruptcy and MLB

Posted on December 13, 2007
To my surprise, the release of the Mitchell report is clearly pulling readers away from this site. Here is the link to the report.As a matter of geeky interest, there are at least three instances where electronic documents are referred to. Apparently the investigators received 20,000 electronic documents from the Commissioner and from offices of the individual ball clubs...

Trustee "Smart Form" May Become Data-Miner's Smart Bomb

Posted on December 12, 2007
I have been sitting on this one a while, but when ALM and ABI picked up the story, decided it was worth a few electrons in this forum. In at least the last 2 years, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the United States Trustee has been working on an initiative to develop and implement standards for the use of "smart forms" or "data enabled" forms for the use in debtor bankruptcy filings...

Forget Sub-Prime: The Real Action in E-Bankruptcy may be the Struggling Adult Industry

Posted on November 20, 2007
A recent article in Conde' Nast Portfolio.com, written by Claire Hoffman details the financial struggles of the heavy-hitters in the adult industry, such as Vivid Entertainment, as a result of the growing phenomenon of free Internet pornography. According to the article, the adult industry, which hit its peak with the advent of the VCR and later the DVD, is now facing spiraling losses from sites such as YouPorn (the illicit cousin of YouTube), who are giving away what companies like Vivid are accustomed to selling...

Trouble at E-Trade Proves that Sub-Prime Woes Rankle E-Paradise

Posted on November 14, 2007
Recent conjecture that E-Trade may be forced to file bankruptcy as a result of the continuing sub-prime mortgage fiasco shows that even "e-commerce" is vulnerable to exposure. Outside of foreclosures and shocking re-adjustment of ARM's, this may be the first evidence of direct impact on individuals...

Hawaiian Airlines Bankruptcy: Issuing a "Litigation Hold" May not be Enough when Rogue Employee Destroys ESI

Posted on November 06, 2007
Mesa Air Group, a party in bankruptcy litigation with debtor Hawaiian Airlines (HA), got an ugly pre-Halloween surprise from the bankruptcy court hearing the case. According to the the recent opinion in Adv. Proc No 06-90026, and currently being reported as 2007 Bankr...

State Bar of Texas Displays Technological Dominance Through Recently Announced YouTube Contest

Posted on October 19, 2007
My friend John Sirman and his cohorts at the State Bar of Texas continue to amaze me. Earlier this year, the Texas Bar was the first bar organization in the country to offer its own on-line social network, known as Affinity Circles. This has already been a great tool for me to increase readership of this blog, to locate local counsel in other areas, re-connect with old friends, and develop new relationships...

Fulbright Litigation Survey Highlights E-Discovery Issues

Posted on October 16, 2007
Our Biglaw friends at Fulbright & Jaworski have released their 4th annual Litigation Trends Survey (available here) which on its own is something of an interesting read. The more interesting tidbits relate, of course, to the respondents' views on E-Discovery...

Bankrupt SCO Group Looks Inward for Future Revenue

Posted on October 03, 2007
The recent bankruptcy of SCO Group seemed to bring a mirthful grin to the ultra-techy legal geeksters among us. Given the forces that drove SCO Group into Chapter 11, and the future problems that the company may face in terms of ever generating a dime of revenue or goodwill on its future UNIX products after the LINUX fiasco with Novell (and a host of others), makes the reliance on existing talent a bit of a surprise...

Will the Coming Flood in Commercial Bankruptcies Look Like 0's and 1's?

Posted on September 24, 2007
The piece below summarizes the dearly held beliefs of many bankruptcy practitioners throughout the country: that commercial bankruptcy is about to experience a huge up-tick in its cyclical progression. The continued onslaught of the sub-prime mortgage industry, coupled with $80 oil seems to have everyone on edge...

Blue Light Special in the Boot and Nuke Department - Conclusion

Posted on September 17, 2007
Finally, after detailing Timeline #1 and Timeline #2, comes some of the points to be considered and lessons to be learned from a recent KMart discovery opinion. To be certain, these issues were developing prior to the 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and hindsight is largely 20/20...

Blue Light Special in the Boot and Nuke Department - Part 2

Posted on September 17, 2007
When last we visited our friends at KMart, we reviewed the procedural background and also had a go at the digital enterprise.Time Line #2During the 2003 audit of Global's books by KMart, Debtor's management knew that Global was less than happy that KMart had apparently started contacting Global's subs, the very thing KMart was asked not to do...

The Sedona Principles and Bankruptcy

Posted on September 17, 2007
My wife and I recently brought home a kitten for our children. Our youngest, the well-intentioned but maniacal three year old, has showered the kitten with so much attention and tough love that the poor kitten spends a lot of time with me in order to gain reprieve from the three year old...

Finally, a Legitimate Business Use for that iPhone...

Posted on September 17, 2007
According to an article out last night, a handful of bankruptcy courts are about to embark on a pilot project aimed at making mp3 audio files available of hearings, that can be downloaded in much the same way we currently use PACER to access dockets.The project is reportedly the brain-child of Judge Rich Leonard of the Eastern District of North Carolina...

A Word, or Three, about Technological Competence

Posted on September 17, 2007
First a programming note - I apologize for having been away for so long. Given the unprecedented rain that the North Texas region has been experiencing this summer, I have spent every waking hour learning all I can about Indoor Drag Racing. By all accounts, I should have plenty of extra resources to invest in this great new idea...

Electronic Armageddon, or Just Good Marketing?

Posted on September 17, 2007
This is the moment that serious Blackberry addicts such as myself have long feared... iPhone or no iPhone? The only good news about this quandary is that coverage of the Paris Hilton incarceration and re-birth might be temporarily on hiatus.Apparently the primary source of the digital addict's confusion is based on the fact that the iPhone email function may not be of much use to the hip and happening professional...

Phoning it in has a Whole New Meaning

Posted on September 10, 2007
The good folks at the recently established Small Scale Digital Device Forensics Journal might have some interest in this development over the summer. Further proof that counsel can never get too far behind the latest technological and forensic developments...

District Court Jumps in Front of E-Discovery: Maryland Protocol Cooler than the Matrix

Posted on September 07, 2007
A joint bar-court committee, headed up by the obviously talented Magistrate Judge Paul W. Grimm, in the District of Maryland has produced a Suggested Protocol for Discovery of Electronically Stored Information (ESI), which some have referred to in short hand as the Maryland Protocol...

Discovery Cracker sold to CT Summation

Posted on August 29, 2007
I wonder if Don Imus had anything to do with naming that product...?

Sub Prime Carnage Continues with Lehman Bros.

Posted on August 22, 2007
I hope that, in all of the layoffs taking place, Lehman doesn't can all of the IT folks...

E-Everything... Meet eWorld!

Posted on August 21, 2007
Long time readers know that this blog was intended to be more than just an insomnia curing repository for discussions of sec. 541 of the Bankruptcy Code in the digital era. Those same long time readers (thanks Mom!) also should have figured out by now that music is a big part of the forces motivating yours truly...

Those Pesky Debtors and Their Technology...

Posted on August 19, 2007
The company in the news piece below, PubliCARD, Inc., develops the "smart cards" that are all too familiar to today's college students. The applications can include cashless cafeteria transactions, tracking attendance, etc. Those attorneys for the Debtors in this case must be pretty folks, being able to wrap their "reorganizing arms" around the technology involved in this case...

Blue Light Special in the Boot and Nuke Department - Part I

Posted on August 12, 2007
I can remember all too well as a child hearing the KMart PA announcement that there was a blue light special in the children's shoes department... the pushing, clawing, and biting... running over poor little old ladies standing in line at those horrid KMart snack bars, leaving in our wake a tangle of wrinkled skin, bent and battered walkers intermingled with Cherry Icees and nacho cheese...

Comparing Rotten Apples to Rotten Oranges

Posted on June 15, 2007
"Well I heard Mister Young sing about herWell I heard ole Neil put her downWell I hope Neil Young will rememberA Southern Man don't need him around anyhow"Sweet Home AlabamaLynyrd SkynyrdA few weeks ago I got cross-ways with the State of Alabama, based on a recent ethics opinion regarding the use of metadata...