Our Distressed Debt & Bankruptcy lawyers represent secured and unsecured creditors, creditors’ committees, bankruptcy trustees, and other parties affected by financial insolvency issues. We provide thoughtful counsel and execute strategies tailored to the client’s objectives.
We advise commercial and retail banks, credit unions, hedge funds, REITs, consumer finance lenders, insurers, and secured and unsecured creditors of all kinds on matters occurring before and after bankruptcy filings. Our clients also include commercial lessors and lessees, partnerships, and other bankruptcy stakeholders.
Litigation Matters
The firm has broad experience defending against attempts by creditors committees, debtors, and trustees to avoid transfers and transactions alleged to be fraudulent or preferential. We defend against efforts to disallow claims, revive obligations, or force property dispositions. We also represent clients in actions brought against officers and directors, licensed professionals, and other named defendants in actions brought before bankruptcy courts. And our lawyers appear in bankruptcy courts seeking relief from the automatic stay so our clients can pursue satisfaction beyond the aegis of the court.
Non-Litigation Matters
Johnston Clem Gifford supports the preparation, prosecution, and defense of proofs of claim and related matters. We also help our clients analyze and evaluate proposed reorganization plans, creditors’ trusts, and related issues. Where appropriate, we represent clients in opposition or support of these plans. We also help evaluate and protect loss carry forwards and other tax benefits that clients can achieve within a bankruptcy case.
We have extensive experience addressing property and business acquisitions and dispositions through the bankruptcy courts. We also help clients analyze capital structures, investment opportunities, and other cost/benefit and risk evaluations.
Workouts & Creditors’ Rights
Our bankruptcy-related experience informs our guidance on financial workouts and other creditors’ rights issues. We represent borrowers, landlords, lenders, tenants, and other parties-in-interest in assignments for the benefit of creditors, forcible entry and detainer cases, foreclosure actions, and private and public sales under the Uniform Commercial Code. We also help borrowers, lenders, suppliers and interested third parties negotiate alternatives to bankruptcy or other traditional, yet often less flexible, resolutions.
With the support of our commercial litigation team, our creditors’ rights lawyers continue to pursue our clients’ interests after judgment. We perform sophisticated analyses of the debtors and available sources of recovery, including potential fraudulent transfer claims. Where appropriate, we abstract and perfect judgments, domesticate judgments in foreign jurisdictions, and pursue writs of garnishment, execution, and attachment in an effort to maximize recovery and minimize risk of loss.