I submitted a comment letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency regarding its proposed rule on interchange fees as non-interest fees and charges and its preemption order thereunder regarding the Illinois Interchange Prohibition Act.
My comment letter does not address the policy wisdom of the Illinois law. Rather, it focuses on the legal infirmities of the OCC rule. If we take the Major Questions Doctrine and the Unitary Executive Theory seriously, it is hard to see the authority for the OCC rule for national banks. (Yes, laugh away—we all know that these doctrines only apply in one direction, but let’s at least call out the hypocrisy.)
For Federal savings associations, the authority is even thinner; the OCC claims in a footnote that they have comparable powers, but the sole authority it cites subjects the Federal savings associations’ power to transfer funds to “applicable law,” which would be both the Illinois statute and federal antitrust laws, such that Federal savings associations cannot receive interchange fees that violate either the Illinois statute or federal antitrust laws.
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OCC Interchange Preemption Rule
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Would Anti-Weaponization Fund Payments Be False Claims Act Violations?
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I might be straying a bit from our usual debtor-creditor fare with this post, but I hope you’ll indulge me–there is a small bankruptcy hook. The President’s newly created $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund has been the subject of substantial political uproar. It’s not clear, however, that Congress is going to do anything to prohibit or limit the fund. Yet there might already be an existing legal tool that would make it very risky for anyone to accept a payment from the fund: the federal False Claims Act.
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It’s All Debt to Me
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It’s All Debt to Me, by Professor Kate Elengold, is a newly available article sure to be of interest to many Credit Slips readers. Check out the abstract and read the paper by clicking on this link, but in the meantime, an observation from the article’s conclusion, coupled with the article’s graphic of a set of triangles, frames what to expect:This Article has identified, explained, and explored the way that varied laws and doctrine come together to create the “law of individual debt.” In so doing, it has offered both scaffolding and mapping to understand, holistically, how the law treats debtors and creditors across two axes: public/private and voluntary/involuntary. It asks and answers the question: why are four-similarly situated debtors, each carrying $15,000 of debt that they cannot repay, treated so differently under the law?
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Joe Smith’s Life in Banking
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Joe Smith has been (among other things!) the general counsel of a regional bank, Commissioner of Banks for North Carolina; and the official independent settlement monitor of the National Mortgage Settlement. And Joe has some reflections on these experiences that I recommend reading. One easy way to get started is with his 2026 essay published by The North Carolina Banking Institute.
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Eddie Bauer’s New Jersey Venue
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Multi-Color Corporation is not the only pending New Jersey bankruptcy case with something strange going on in the venue department. Eddie Bauer’s venue is very odd too. (more…)
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Multi-Color Corporation: Venue Responses
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My amicus brief in the Multi-Color Corporation bankruptcy seems to have touched a nerve, with some interesting responses from both the debtor and Judge Kaplan. I’ll note that this is not the first time something has seemed amiss with New Jersey venue, and it’s not even the only pending case with strange venue.
I want to respond to the debtor’s claims about case distribution, to Judge Kaplan’s comments. In a separate post I’m going to discuss venue in the Eddie Bauer’s bankruptcy (which is with Judge Meisel).
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What’s Going on with New Jersey Chapter 11 Case Assignments?
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This morning I filed an amicus brief in support of the mandamus petition filed regarding the New Jersey bankruptcy court’s venue decision in the Multi-Color Corporation’s chapter 11.
It’s no secret that New Jersey has become on of the favored forum-shopping venues for large chapter 11 cases. It’s still not the premier filing venue, but it’s outpacing basically everyone except Delaware, SDTX, and SDNY when it comes to mega cases (>$1 billion in liabilities). What’s more interesting, though, is what happens to those cases when they get filed in New Jersey. The court’s local rules say that case assignment is by “vicinage”–basically north Jersey goes to Newark, central to Trenton, and south to Camden. But take a look at case assignments for cases with over $100 million in liabilities in NJ since 2018.
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Professor Elizabeth Gibson wins Distinguished Service Award
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Some happy news: Elizabeth Gibson, beloved UNC Law professor and alum,* is the recipient of the American College of Bankruptcy Distinguished Service Award, to be bestowed at a ceremony later this week. In the meantime, read a tribute to Elizabeth by Pat Vance, last year’s recipient, here.
* Given the date, I’m obliged to mention that Elizabeth, also a Duke grad, may favor a certain other college basketball team known for donning a darker shade of blue.
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A Cancer on the Chapter 11 System
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Judge Kaplan in Trenton has issued a significant, but troubling opinion on bankruptcy venue in the Multi-Color Corporation’s Chapter 11 that effectively blesses a blatant forum-shopping method of opening a bank account in a judicial district days before filing in order to establish venue through the location of the debtor’s principal assets. If this sort of forum-shopping is permitted, is there anything that crosses the line? (more…)
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An Oscar-Backed Loan? A Quick Academy Awards Special Edition
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The red carpet is studded with property and contract questions. Who among those A-List stars even owns the outfits they showcase? In the article “25 Things You Don’t Know about the Oscars” from the March 9, 2026 edition of Us Magazine, author Molly McGuigan says Academy Award winners also do not own the statues they win. The cited explanation? “Since 1950, they’ve signed a special agreement stating they can’t sell or dispose of their trophies without first offering to sell them to the Academy for $1.” (The web version is slightly different from the digital version I quote here). Technically that’s not the same as lack of ownership, but to what extent does it hamper the bundle of sticks?
So … under what circumstances would you make a loan backed by an Academy Award statue (whether or not its name is Oscar)?
