Bankruptcy

Every insolvency matter presents a unique set of business, financial, and legal challenges. Stites & Harbison’s approach begins with understanding our clients’ objectives, assessing the specific facts and circumstances of each situation, and developing strategies tailored to achieve the best possible outcome. Drawing on decades of experience representing secured and unsecured creditors, lenders, landlords, trade vendors, trustees, and other interested parties, we provide practical guidance designed to protect our clients’ interests and maximize recovery.

We recognize that successful outcomes often require more than a single approach. Our attorneys are experienced negotiators and trial lawyers who leverage litigation, strategic negotiation, and business-driven workout solutions, often simultaneously, to advance our clients’ goals. When appropriate, we pursue pragmatic alternatives to litigation that preserve business relationships, reduce costs, and avoid the uncertainty and delays associated with court proceedings.

Whether addressing distressed loans, loan restructurings, forbearance agreements, out-of-court workouts, receiverships, bankruptcy proceedings, or complex insolvency disputes, we provide clients with timely, practical, and results-oriented counsel. We represent creditors and other stakeholders in matters involving preference and fraudulent transfer claims, contested plan confirmation proceedings, asset sales, claims disputes, automatic stay issues, and other bankruptcy-related litigation.

From the earliest signs of financial distress through final resolution, we stand ready to protect our clients’ rights and pursue effective solutions in all aspects of bankruptcy, insolvency, restructuring, and workout matters. Our focus remains constant: helping clients minimize risk, maximize recovery, and achieve their business objectives as efficiently as possible.

Our Creditors’ Rights & Bankruptcy Service Group attorneys regularly:

• Negotiate complex Chapter 11 reorganization plans
• Participate in stay litigation
• Negotiate and litigate secured creditor priority disputes
• Assist clients in filing involuntary cases
• Defend preference and fraudulent conveyance claims
• Prosecute bankruptcy appeals
• Negotiate and document the purchase of assets from debtors’ estates
• Represent landlords and intellectual property owners in connection with motions for assumption or rejection of leases and license agreements
• Defend lender liability claims
• Prosecution and defense of secured and unsecured claims
• Relief from stay against the debtor
• Purchase and sale of debtor’s assets in 363 sales, including credit bidding
• Assumption or rejection of leases and executory contracts
• Defend against preferences, alleged fraudulent transfer, and other avoidable transfers
• Foreclosures and lien priority
• Actions involving borrowers and guarantors
• Commercial and consumer garnishments
• Forbearance agreements and loan modifications
• Recovery of accounts receivable
• Replevin

Our practical experience in workout negotiations and bankruptcy proceedings in a broad range of industries gives us the background to prepare both pleadings and transaction documents that may best survive the “acid test” of hostile bankruptcy filings. Our bankruptcy attorneys regularly advise both companies and lenders as to the creative possibilities of, and the dangers inherent in, bankruptcy filings and reorganizations.

Recent and Current Engagements:

• Represented largest secured creditor in multiple coal bankruptcies
• Guided USDA approved lending institution through Chapter 11 bankruptcies and liquidations
• Foreclosed on 300 unit apartment complex for multi-million dollar lender
• Represented Lender on defaulted loans, including piercing the corporate veil and achieving settlement with borrower’s principals
• Represented the D-I-P lender and secured creditor in a regional clothing retailer’s Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, resulting in a successful auction of the retailer’s inventory and full recovery by the client.
• Represented a secured lender in a large not-for-profit bankruptcy.
• Represent a major secured creditor in a restaurant-chain Chapter 11.
• Represent a hedge fund in the individual Chapter 11 bankruptcy of the guarantor.
• Represented lenders and loan servicers in the foreclosure of apartment complexes, office buildings, hotels, and warehouses across the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
• Represented a major secured creditor in connection with the insolvencies of several nursing homes and assisted living centers.
• Obtained stay relief in a bankruptcy case to pursue trademark infringement litigation in U.S. District Court.
• Helped surety companies negotiate reorganization agreements and plans in coal company bankruptcies with debtors, creditors and regulatory authorities, providing for both continuing mine reclamation and reduction of the sureties’ potential multi-million-dollar reclamation-bond liability.
• Used post-petition financing to acquire state-of-the-art operating assets for a start-up production and broadcast client.
• Defended and prosecuted fraudulent conveyance and voidable preference claims brought by bankruptcy trustees and debtors.
• Represented multiple shopping center landlords during the reorganizations or liquidations of several national discount retailers,
• Represented a consortium of secured creditors during the reorganization of a HUD- and HHS-financed non-profit public housing corporation.
• Negotiated a secured creditor-driven liquidation of a convenience store chain.
• Represented the agent bank in connection with a $100 million+ credit facility in a major agricultural (hog production) bankruptcy.

Attorneys in the Creditors’ Rights & Bankruptcy Service Group are active members of:

• The American Bankruptcy Institute
• The Commercial Law League of America
• The Business Bankruptcy Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association
• The Bankruptcy Law Sections of the Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama Bar Associations and the Louisville, Nashville, Fayette County, Atlanta Bar Associations
• The International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (IWRC)
• One member of our group is designated as a specialist in business bankruptcy by the American Board of Certification, and several are listed in The Best Lawyers in America^®. Creditors’ Rights & Bankruptcy Service Group attorneys practice regionally in the courts of Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, and regularly appear and represent regional clients’ interests in bankruptcy courts from New York to California.