Practice Areas & Industries: Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Experience from a Broad Base of Practice Skills

The lawyers in our Business Restructuring and Bankruptcy Group devote substantial time to the business affairs of troubled companies, to representing creditors of such organizations, and to bankruptcy litigation. In addition, these lawyers have significant experience in many disciplines, including real estate, banking, corporate, financial derivatives, energy, finance, tax, and technology. The group's blend of business and bankruptcy knowledge, its size and its depth of experience in related legal areas ensures that client needs will be efficiently matched with the skills of the lawyers.

Services Available

Diverse Insolvency Practice

Our practice covers the spectrum from workouts through insolvency proceedings to liquidation or foreclosure. Outside of bankruptcy, our lawyers negotiate and document debt restructures and workout arrangements, and furnish counseling to debtors, their owners and managers, as well as advising creditors of the troubled enterprise. We handle complex financial workouts that require our attorneys to be effective not only in dealing with legal issues, but also with business relationships, corporate governance, and specific industry practices.

Our lawyers are thoroughly familiar with state receivership proceedings and involuntary bankruptcy proceedings. We have particular experience in Chapter 11 cases, with insolvency tax planning. We handle all phases of bankruptcy and debtor-creditor litigation, including automatic stay, preference claims, other avoidable transfers, and issues of collection, foreclosure and recourse against guarantors.

We have provided bankruptcy-related counsel to a broad variety of clients in diverse industries. For example, our Group includes a team of lawyers who focus their efforts on legal and business issues arising from the bankruptcies of energy companies. The team provides advice on numerous industry-specific issues relating to forward contracts, swaps, tolling agreements, and options that are outside the areas of experience of most firms that provide insolvency advice. Our lawyers have represented both debtors and creditors in single-asset real estate bankruptcies and have dealt with all aspects of these cases, including dismissal for want of good faith, protection of rents, and attempts by debtors to "cram down" secured creditors' positions.

In recent years, lawyers from our Group have:

• Appeared as counsel for interested parties in bankruptcy courts in the Districts of Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland and Nevada, as well as in the Southern District of New York, the Eastern District of Virginia, and the Northern District of Georgia. We have worked closely with most, if not all, the firms that regularly serve as turnaround advisors in major insolvencies and have good working relationships with lawyers in the firms that most frequently appear as debtor's counsel in major Chapter 11 cases.
• Represented public companies, private purchasers, and equity funds in the acquisition of various companies out of Chapter 11s in the bankruptcy courts in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Wilmington and Atlanta.
• Served as special energy counsel responsible for directing the liquidation of $1 billion trading "book" of a major energy trading entity in Chapter 11, including negotiating, arbitrating, mediating, and litigating with trading counterparties.
• Represented multiple clients (arguing motions, negotiating and documenting the sale of claims, arbitrating, and litigating) in energy trading bankruptcies, such as:
  • Power Company of America
  • Enron Corporation
  • Mirant Corporation
• Represented publicly-traded technology company in numerous complex commercial litigations with bankrupt technology and telecommunications companies, including Exodus Communications and Metromedia Fiber Networks.
• Represented senior secured lending groups in debt restructurings of wireless companies located in Alaska, Michigan, California and Georgia.
• Represented client on the official committee of unsecured creditors appointed in the Chapter 11 case of the largest uranium trading organization in this country.

Business Restructuring and Bankruptcy Lawyers

Our Business Restructuring and Bankruptcy Group is a firmwide practice group consisting of over twenty lawyers. The senior members of the group are:

• Rick Murphy, a commercial litigator and a former banker, with extensive bankruptcy experience throughout his career;
• Knox Dobbins, Jim Darrow and Eric Fenichel, corporate finance lawyers with significant workout experience;
• Tom Byrne, a trial lawyer who has concentrated on bankruptcy litigation since joining the firm in 1982;
• Ed Hales, Al Adams and Jim Jordan, all commercial real estate lawyers with significant real estate-related bankruptcy and insolvency experience;
• Celeste Pickron and Michael Miles, tax lawyers with extensive backgrounds in partnership, corporate and tax matter, and tax aspects of restructuring and bankruptcy;
• Steuart Thomsen, an experienced litigator with particular knowledge in litigation planning and strategy;
• Jacob Dweck and Paul Turner, lawyers with extensive experience in energy and technology-related bankruptcies, including the liquidation and valuation of forward contracts, swaps, derivatives, and options; and

Clients:
Power Company of America, Enron Corporation, Mirant Corporation, Exodus Communications, Metromedia Fiber Networks