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Chapter 11 announced - Part 11 - Judge's Opinion


Eagle1993

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The issue about vetting came in from the mass tort lawyers that spent no time vetting claims.  I expect most who sought out the bankruptcy on their own, filled out a claim form and signed with their name are legitimate.  The ones I question more are those that came in from the midnight TV ads and call centers.  The Judge approved the trolling for claims, only if lawyers reviewed and signed off on those claim forms.  Through discovery, it was clear that many law firms did little to no vetting of the claims.  The quickly back peddled when asked to defend the claims same lawyers were saying, no that is my law firm, not me personally signing off on the claim.

The judge was very upset, but it is too late to fix that now.  BSA was very concerned and pushed back on any vetting saying the cost and time would be too great an ask and could lead them to liquidation.

So, the great compromise is the judge will see the vetting occur through the trustee.  I expect that was always the plan, but her bar will likely raise based on what she saw in this case. 

My guess ... the threat of the vetting will scare away many if not most of the fraudulent claims.  

 

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1 minute ago, Eagle1993 said:

The Judge approved the trolling for claims, only if lawyers reviewed and signed off on those claim forms. 

And therein lies the source of the problem. Legal and ethical self government is a hard thing to police and even harder when the motive is moolah. 

Note: This is specifically a comment about the judge allowing something dangerous then saying, "You have my permission, but don't be naughty, children." Her admonishing was weak at best. I knew when she aid it during that hearing we had trouble right here in River City. Further, it's commentary on the recent directive to the Trustee to create the processes and begin investigating only AFTER she reviews and approves the means and method of sniffing.

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32 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

... I am also wondering about the details of how the pattern analysis would work to suss out memory lags v smell like rotten fish claims. ...

As someone who consults on such propositions, I can assure you that it would be very labor intensive to develop and would work with questionable results that would have a high degree of measurement error. (Think of the AI developed for facial recognition that wound up disproportionately singling out minorities, and you get the idea.) It would take decades to develop a method that would prove trusted by all parties. In the best of circumstances some legitimate claims would be tagged as "rotten fish". Do we really want to inflict that pain on victims whose claims were hastily assembled just so we can suss out fraud? The "true" victims will not benefit because recapture from any false claims would have been spent on sussing them out.

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Final plan & exhibits were uploaded last night.  Century supports the updates; however, we may see some fireworks with Guam and possibly the judge.  

3b0d7c7a-ca0e-4eab-ad84-f43950dc2b65_10299.pdf (omniagentsolutions.com)

Quote

As a result of those communications, the Settling Insurance Companies made certain modifications to Paragraph M to clarify the terms of their proposed voluntary waiver of the free and clear sale condition. The Plan Proponents also responded to questions posed by the Lujan Claimants regarding various provisions in Paragraph M. However, Century and the Chubb Companies are not willing to make wholesale changes to their voluntary waiver agreement, such as striking the conditions that form the essential predicate for their proposed voluntary waiver. Nor are Century and the Chubb Companies willing to narrow the scope of the protections that the Court approved in the Confirmation Opinion.

Basically, the issue comes down to the insurance for the Archbishop of Agana.  While the judge said that cannot be included in the settlement (as it is held up in a different bankruptcy) Century does not want to simply leave it free and clear.  Guam likely disagrees.  So, it will be up to the judge.

Otherwise, I'm not sure if anything else will cause much of a disagreement.  Time will tell.

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18 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

Judge said if Archbishop of Agana didn't like it, they should have showed up.

I wonder if failure to make an appearance here can be found to be malpractice. If my attorney said, "No problem. We don't need to appear" and this was said by a judge, I wouldn't be too happy. Granted, I don't think an appearance would've altered the outcome at all.

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1 hour ago, ThenNow said:

Brother you can say that again. On second thought, please don’t. I’m beyond saturated with that attempt to self-coronate, canonize and congratulate. 

Yeah....the cringy moment of the day was when one of the attorneys lightheartedly mentioned to the Judge that the proceeding's complexity and reminder of past hearings might be "TRIGGERING" to her.  UH, how about if we dont joke about that.  Some just don't get it.

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