Category: Small Business

  • Juliet Moringiello – One of the Greats

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    Juliet Moringiello was an amazing person. Her alchemy of brain and spirit and energy and heart and common sense made a positive difference for so many people, across disparate places and professions. She could teach you how to navigate a commercial law and to downhill ski.

    Testaments from Widener University Commonwealth Law School and professional organizations illustrate how Juliet served academic and legal communities with distinction. Examples include the Uniform Law Commission (including an instrumental role in the development of the 2022 amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code), American Law Institute projects, and as a scholar-in-residence for the American Bankruptcy Institute. Juliet did these things while also serving in critical leadership roles at Widener and offering engaged and committed classroom teaching, including first-year property law and an array of upper level classes and seminars. 

    Chris Odinet's memorial captures beautifully Juliet's commitment to helping others and building communities. As reflected in the mentoring award she recently received from the Commercial and Consumer Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, Juliet did so much behind the scenes to lift up others and to help them improve their research and analysis. 

    Juliet was ideally positioned for mentoring because her own scholarship was creative and wide-ranging and yet reflected care and attention to detail. She offered important insights on municipal bankruptcy and related state law procedures. Whereas scholars and jurists long have referred to the "Butner principle" in the abstract, Juliet closely studied the case for which the principle is named, which turned out not to match how it was remembered. She explored poorly drafted statutory language that since 2005 has affected the treatment of car loans in Chapter 13 repayment plans for individuals and proposed an analytical framework accordingly. These are just a few of the examples of her writings in which a reader can find careful and sustained attention to the relationship between state and federal law. 

    With respect to state secured transactions law, Juliet comfortably traversed the border between real property and personal property. The problems dwelling from the tangible-intangible divide of personal property particularly attracted her attention. She explored puzzles that arise, for example, when one tries to apply fundamental concepts such as possession to remotely controlled activities.

    And those projects dovetailed with Juliet's longstanding interest in understanding emerging technologies, and her ability to demystify how foundational commercial law concepts can be squared with innovation – from software licensing agreements and electronic contracting, to cyberspace and domain names and Second Life, to non-fungible tokens. As popular subjects for scholarship, writings on hot tech topics risk ephemerality. Juliet's work is built to last. She made these issues accessible while demonstrating how they could and should be situated in broader legal frameworks.

    Of course, these professional interests were part of a rich multi-faceted life of family and friends, of appreciating the sights and nature in Pennsylvania, in Quebec, and anywhere and everywhere she traveled. When there wasn't enough snow for skiis, you might find her on a hike. Or on a bike. Or a paddleboard. 

    Juliet Moringiello offers inspiration to do impactful work, to help others, and to spend time on the the things you love. Deepest condolences to her family. 

  • Unjust Debts on the Road

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    Unjust_debts_finalFirst, thanks to Bob Lawless for his post about my new book. It has been great to engage with people about Unjust Debts so far, and especially appreciated the book making a new Financial Times best books list (links to that and other coverage here). Wanted to note a few upcoming book events for Credit Slips readers:

    • June 27 (TONIGHT): Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn NY, in conversation with Zephyr Teachout. Information and RSVP here. 
    • July 1 (VIRTUAL): Commonwealth Club World Affairs, in conversation with Senator Elizabeth Warren. Information and registration here. 
    • July 8: Politics & Prose, Washington DC, in conversation with Vicki Shabo. Information here. 

  • About 44% of Chapter 11s are Subchapter V Cases

    Posted by

    Bob Lawless

    As many readers will know, Congress created subchapter V to streamline the chapter 11 process and to make it work better for small businesses. It became effective in March 2020, just as the pandemic hit, and was available to businesses with less than $2,500,000 in debts. Congress raised the debt limit to $7,500,000 to make it available to more businesses, and that higher debt limit will sunset on June 21, 2024, unless Congress acts. By all accounts, subchapter V is working as designed, helping small-business owners to continue their businesses. Both the National Bankruptcy Conference and the American Bankruptcy Institute's Task Force on Subchapter V have recommended that Congress make the $7,500,000 debt cap permanent. 

    How much does it matter? How many chapter 11 filers use subchapter V? The answer to those questions is more difficult than it should be.  The readily available bankruptcy statistics from the U.S. Courts do not report subchapter V cases, although they should. To answer those questions, I downloaded the integrated bankruptcy petition database from the Federal Judicial Center, which contains every bankruptcy petition filed.

    And the answer is . . . in 2023, forty-five percent of chapter 11 debtors used subchapter V. That was 1,854 of the 4,121 chapter 11 cases in 2023. Unfortunately, the database does not have the subchapter V variable for years before 2023. Well it does, but the variable is not reliable for years before 2023. The rest of the post, "below the fold," explains the rest of my math.

    (more…)

  • A Uniform Law Project of Note: Special Deposits Act

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    Last week, bolstered by a continuing legal education program offered by the American Law Institute, I started studying a new uniform law that will be recommended to your state legislature in the coming days and months. It is called the Special Deposits Act. As of today it has not yet been enacted by a state legislature. But trust me when I predict that you want to study it too – especially because the choice of law rules will work differently for this uniform law than for, say, the digital assets amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code. In other words, if one of the green states in the map below adopts the law, parties can contract for that state to govern the special deposit as well as to be the forum for disputes, even if there's no other relationship with that state.

     

    Special deposit act

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    A special deposit is payable on the occurrence of a contingency and the identity of the party entitled to the funds is uncertain until the contingency happens. Right now, the law governing special deposits is nonuniform and the details can be uncertain, including the rights of creditors against those funds. One big impact of this uniform Special Deposits Act is this: in broadest terms, if a bank and depositor agree that a deposit account is a special deposit, and it meets the requirements for permissible purpose under the law, this law says that the funds in that account are not property of the depositor, including if the depositor files for bankruptcy, and cannot be reached by the depositors' creditors. (Fraudulent transfer law still applies and the drafters say there are other anti-fraud measures in place). The bankruptcy world may be interested in this law for an additional reason: possible use of special deposits in a bankruptcy case to pay professionals, or for large numbers of claimants, etc.

    I also find this law interesting because of its implications for loans secured by deposit accounts under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Even if a bank has a security interest in all deposit accounts of a debtor held by a bank, and is automatically perfected by control, the bank's enforcement rights are far more limited against the special deposit than against a typical bank account. In general, the bank cannot exercise rights of setoff or recoupment against a special deposit.

    Again, as of today no state has enacted the Special Deposits Act. But given how the law is drafted, it will take just one state to adopt it, and for lawyers to encourage banks and depositors to opt in to that state's law, to have a much broader effect. Check out the materials here.

  • The Section 1071 Small Business Lending Data Collection Rule

    Posted by

    Adam Levitin

    The Senate voted 53-44 to overturn the CFPB's section 1071 small business lending data collection rule under the Congressional Review Act. If the House can ever function, I'd expect that there are the votes there too to overturn the rulemaking, but it's all sort of a show given that President Biden is threatening a veto and there aren't the votes to override a veto.

    So three thoughts on this. First, doing a CRA resolution that has no chance of passing is a huge waste of the most precious commodity in DC, namely Senate floor time. But perhaps that is the point. More time on CRA resolutions, less time available for confirming judges, etc. I'm surprised we don't see continuous filing of CRA resolutions as itself a delay tactic in the Senate.

    Second, imagine for a second that the CRA resolution passed. The CFPB would be precluded from promulgating another rule that is "substantially the same" without new Congressional authorization. But section 1071 would still stand. Is there any way the CFPB could do any data collection rule that is not "substantially the same," in terms of requiring production by small business lenders of data about the borrowers and loans? If so, then it suggests that "substantially the same" must actually be quite narrowly construed (e.g., if rule 1.0 asked about LTV and rule 2.0 did not, they are not "substantially the same"), which has important implications for the CFPB's ability to undertake a new arbitration rulemaking.

    Third, assuming that the resolution fails, we will then have data collection regimes for mortgages and small business loans. That data is important for monitoring against discriminatory lending. Doesn't it seem strange to limit the data collection to just those markets? Why not extend it to the most obvious market, where there have long been concerns about discriminatory lending, namely auto lending, as some have previously suggested?

  • Creative Destruction in Small Business Bankruptcy

    Posted by

    Jason Kilborn

    Two distantly related items caught my eye this morning, as both reinforce the need for "creative destruction" as a response to all-too-common small business failure.

    The first was a NYT piece on the travails of a female entrepreneur in China. It tells a heart-wrenching story of a system in which the state brutally represses honest but unfortunate debtors, including via the infamous blacklist that prevents defaulters from using air and train travel (effectively curtailing re-entry into business, even if financial and economic factors might otherwise allow this). This is a story about what it looks like when there is no bankruptcy backstop, no reset button to start fresh and undertake a new venture with the hard lessons of failure firmly in mind.

    The other item explores the transition from such an unforgiving system–in Spain–after the introduction of a discharge for (most) small business debt. The linked Bank of Spain working paper offers further evidence of the salutary effects of small business bankruptcy that discharges individual entrepreneurs and encourages them to restart. The reform fostered the "creative destruction" of these entrepreneurs' ventures, with the failed firms exiting the market (rather than lingering as productivity-depressing zombies), which "leads to technological change and higher productivity growth" as "the introduction of the fresh start policy promoted firm creation among Spanish micro-firms, especially in companies with a high share of intangible assets, which are likely to be involved in innovation activities, and in sectors with high productivity." Nicely linking the two contrasting accounts from China and Spain, the Bank of Spain paper concludes, "This finding also suggests that a starkly pro-creditor personal bankruptcy law with no real fresh start, like the Spanish one before 2015, may be an important barrier to entry for small businesses." Indeed.

    It still surprises me that lawmakers around the world continue to resist this long-established truth for small business, powerfully undermining the most important driver of economic development worldwide. Worse yet, the mere introduction of a personal bankruptcy law with a debt discharge is not enough–the system actors have to actually support a fresh-start policy rather than actively undermining it, which turns out to have been the disappointing result of the first two years of such a system in Shenzhen, China. One hopes that national legislatures, like small entrepreneurs, can learn from failure and move forward with proper personal bankruptcy laws when given a fresh opportunity to do so.

  • New Resource on Uniform Commercial Code Reform for Digital Assets including Crytocurrency

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    Earlier this fall I linked to a variety of resources, including webinars, on amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code to account for various types of digital assets. The scope includes but is not limited to commercial transactions involving cryptocurrency.

    To add to these resources, a version of the amendments that includes official comments is now available.  

    Because there will not be a uniform effective date, and some states have gotten an early start by implementing prior drafts of the amendments (see prior post), these could swiftly become relevant to transactions and disputes, including those that land in bankruptcy court. 

  • Getting Ready for Uniform Commercial Code Reform?

    Posted by

    Melissa Jacoby

    2022 amendmentsIAs digital assets and emerging technologies become common in commercial transactions, state commercial law must rise to the challenge – that's the driving force behind a new set of amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code, including Article 9 governing secured transactions in personal property – such as in virtual currencies and nonfungible tokens.

    No state has enacted the amendments yet,* but prior reforms to Article 9, at least, have been remarkably successful at achieving broad enactment. Consider, for example, the visual of the 2010 amendments to Article 9. Blue=enacted!

    2010 amendments

    How to track developments? Here are some publicly available resources courtesy of the Uniform Law Commission:

    First, here is where to find the actual amendments as finally approved by the Uniform Law Commission and the American Law Institute. 

    Second, here is a summary. Note the mention at the bottom of transition rules for lenders who followed existing law in perfecting security interests, etc. (by the way, there is not a prospective uniform effective date for these amendments). 

    Third, videos! Here's one highlighting the changes for digital assets. And here's another on other matters covered in the amendments. 

    Fourth, here's where proposed bills and enactment information will be tracked.

    *According to the digital assets video, some states adopted earlier versions of part or all of these amendments (New Hampshire, Iowa, Nebraska, Indiana, Arkansas, and Texas) but are expected to update those to conform with the final versions. Wyoming and Idaho went their own way on commercial transactions in digital assets.  

  • SBRA technical amendment = technical foul?

    Posted by

    Jason Kilborn

    A great Arabic folk idiom describes an all-too-common occurrence: Literally, "he came to apply eye liner to her, but blinded her." [اجا يكحلها عماها  izha ikaHil-ha, cama-ha] In other words, someone attempted to improve a situation but ended up ruining it. I believe I've encountered an example in the "technical amendment" made by the CARES Act to the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019.

    As Bob pointed out almost exactly two years ago, the original SBRA definition of a "small business debtor" was designed to keep out large public companies and their subsidiaries, but the language was … inelegant. The first of two subsections (laid out in Bob's post) excluded companies subject to reporting requirements under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (that is, a company with shares widely held by "the public," as defined by the SEC), while an immediately following exclusion applied to such a company that was an affiliate of a debtor (that is, another company already in bankruptcy). Well, whether you're an affiliate of a debtor or not, if you try to file under subchapter V, and you're subject to the '34 Act reporting requirements, you're excluded by the first subsection, so isn't this second provision redundant?

    Yes, but … in 2020, the CARES Act came to put eye liner on this section and blinded it. Rather than fixing this by saying what seems to have been the intention–that an affiliate of a public reporting company cannot file under subchapter V–instead, a "technical amendment" changed the final provision entirely by simply excluding an affiliate of an "issuer, as defined in section 3 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934." [the same language was inserted in both sections 101(51D)(B)(iii) and 1182, so this change is not temporary]

    The problem, it seems to me, is that the definition of "issuer" in the '34 Act includes far more than a big, public reporting company–it includes any company that issues so many as one share of stock (or other "security"). The '34 Act is generally about trading of public securities, but that's not the only thing it's about, and the definition of "issuer" in the '34 Act is simply reproduced from the '33 Act, with far broader application.

    (more…)

  • Book Rec: Range (or Yet Another Paean to Learning from Failure)

    Posted by

    Jason Kilborn

    With summer upon us, I thought others might be searching for good new reading, as I was when I took up a smart friend's longtime recommendation to read Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. So much good stuff in here. Perhaps contrary to the topic of the book, my brain is constantly in "insolvency policy" mode, so I was particularly interested in the many passages about famous people's meandering struggles to find their passion that catapulted them to success.

    Among my favorites was a description of Nike co-founder Phil Knight's entrepreneurship philosophy: [155] "his main goal for his nascent shoe company was to fail fast enough that he could apply what he was learning to his next venture. He made one short-term pivot after another, applying the lessons as he went." This is exactly the advice offered to country after country hoping to develop more effective SME-friendly bankruptcy regimes … as they unfortunately continue to stick to Old English draconian policies of imposing various restrictions and disabilities on post-bankruptcy entrepreneurs. Range offers yet another extended analysis of why this mindset is so persistent and so counterproductive. We need to let people fail, learn from whatever caused that failure (either mistakes or general economic volatility … or COVID) and get back on their feet quickly to move on to other ventures.

    (more…)