Practice Areas & Industries: Saul Ewing LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Experience in a Full Spectrum of Debtor/Creditor Matters

Saul Ewing's Bankruptcy and Restructuring Department provides significant depth of experience and skills, and a broad range of services, to clients facing the difficulties and complexities arising out of the bankruptcy or insolvency of financially troubled companies. We serve as counsel for a wide variety of clients, including debtors, creditors' committees, equity committees, trustees, creditors, landlords and other lessors, board members, purchasers, and parties defending litigation brought by debtors, or pursuing claims against debtors. Our cases range from the relatively simple to very complex, and we have extensive experience representing parties in litigation arising out of bankruptcies and other insolvencies.

Depth and Strength

With more than 15 attorneys well-versed in bankruptcy and restructuring law, Saul Ewing's Bankruptcy and Restructuring Department is dedicated to handling all aspects of debtor and creditor cases in various courts. We combine experience, resources, strategic planning, and client focus to achieve results for our clients, whether the client is a company in need of financial restructuring or facing other life-threatening crises, or a creditors' committee or individual creditor with specific concerns or interests at stake, or stockholders. We frequently work closely with lawyers in our other practice groups, drawing on their knowledge and experience in the areas of litigation, securities, corporate, tax, and insurance law, as well as other areas. We also are experienced in counseling directors and officers concerning their fiduciary duties and in investigating potential claims arising from insolvencies.

Industries: A Diverse Background

Our experience in bankruptcy cases and out-of-court restructurings encompasses a wide variety of industries, including:

• Manufacturing
• Real Estate
• Health Care
• Insurance
• Retail
• Service
• Technology
• Telecommunications
• Hospitality
• Biotechnology

Forward Thinking and Focus on Results

One of the keys to our success is our focus on strategic and forward thinking, not just reacting to actions taken by others. We also are very focused on results -- achieving the objectives desired by our clients. We see solutions where others may see only problems. We have the experience and ability to resolve the largest and most complex cases, as well as the smaller cases, and will assemble a team of attorneys with the experience and knowledge appropriate for each case.

Services Available

Dedication to client service is one of our passions. Our clients should expect personal attention from the lawyer responsible for each case, and to be kept well informed of significant developments as they occur.

Representative Matters

• One of our lawyers was appointed to serve as the Chapter 11 trustee in a Maryland bankruptcy case involving two individuals and was charged with seeking to recover the debtors' prebankruptcy transfer of significant funds to an offshore asset protection trust. As counsel for the trustee, Saul Ewing attorneys filed a complaint attacking the trust and seeking the repatriation of the trust's assets for the benefit of the debtors' creditors. Within several months, the debtors ultimately settled the litigation for an amount representing most of the funds transferred.
   
• In a large Chapter 11 case for a public company in New York, Impath Inc., our lawyers represented an ad hoc stockholders' committee and succeeded in convincing the bankruptcy court to order the appointment of an official committee of equity holders over the objections of other major parties in the case. As counsel for the equity committee, Saul Ewing played a major role in negotiating the terms of the Chapter 11 plan and in settling class action litigation, as a result of which equity holders received a substantial cash distribution promptly upon the plan becoming effective.
   
• A Saul Ewing team served as lead counsel to 51 debtors in the e.spire case in the District of Delaware, a leading facilities-based integrated communications provider, offering traditional local and long distance and dedicated internet access in 28 markets throughout the United States. After the company's restructuring efforts with bondholders holding publicly traded debt in excess of $1 billion were thwarted by declining market conditions, Saul Ewing bankruptcy attorneys guided the debtors through a complex chapter 11 proceeding that ultimately resulted in the sale of the debtors' business operations, which resulted in the preservation of competitive telecommunications services for numerous customers and numerous jobs.
   
• Our lawyers served as lead counsel for one of the creditors' committees in Conseco, the third largest Chapter 11 case in history. When the large insurance and consumer finance company filed Chapter 11 in Chicago, the Official Committee of Trust Originated Preferred Securities holders ("TOPrS") retained Saul Ewing to represent the interest of the TOPrS, who collectively held subordinated debt exceeding $2 billion. After a complex, protracted, and fiercely fought confirmation hearing, over a plan that would have provided the TOPrS with no recovery, the Debtors and the senior debt holders agreed to a settlement providing the TOPrS a substantial recovery far better than the commentators following the case ever predicted would occur.
   
• Saul Ewing is lead bankruptcy counsel for Owens Corning, a multibillion-dollar world leader in the manufacture and sale of building material systems and composites systems. The bankruptcy cases were commenced in the District of Delaware in order to protect the Company's businesses and value for all of its constituents, and primarily to resolve asbestos claims. The cases involve numerous complex inter-creditor issues and litigation, including the valuation of present and future asbestos liabilities, substantive consolidation law, and fraudulent conveyance litigation.
   
• When an insurance and loan company filed Chapter 11 in Chicago, the Official Committee of Trust Orginated Preferred Securities ("TOPrS") retained Saul Ewing to represent the TOPrS, who in the aggregate were owed approximately $2 billion dollars.
   
• Saul Ewing presently serves as lead counsel for the world leader in advanced glass and building material systems in its Chapter 11 case in Wilmington, Delaware, precipated by the company's mass tort liability. 
   
• We assembled a multi-disciplinary team to guide our client through the purchase of a bankrupt competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC).

Our client is a new local telephone company. When the client decided to purchase the telecommunications assets of a bankrupt competitive local exchange carrier, attorneys from our Telecommunications Practice Group and Bankruptcy and Restructuring Department worked together to guide the client through the high-value purchase. We then assisted the client with numerous coordinated filings with public utility commissions throughout the Mid-Atlantic. When a competitor set up roadblocks in the approval process, our attorneys helped the client fend off the challenges successfully.
 

• An attorney in our Bankruptcy and Restructuring Department won a precedent-setting case establishing in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the rights of a software licensor to prevent a Chapter 11 debtor from returning its license rights without the licensor's consent.