Bankruptcy and Creditors' Rights

Types of Clients Represented

The Bankruptcy and Creditors’ Rights Practice Group represents a wide array of clients. Primarily our clients are secured and unsecured creditors, including trade creditors, special servicers of real estate-backed loans owned by investment trusts, banks, thrifts, insurance companies, and other business clients. Our attorneys also represent business debtors, bankruptcy committees, bankruptcy trustees, and receivers. Other representative clients include parties in litigation with debtors, purchasers of assets from bankruptcy estates, landlords, equipment lessors, guarantors, shareholders and post-petition lenders.

Nature of Practice

The Group’s attorneys assist clients in obtaining repayment of debt and recovery of collateral through their knowledge of creditor remedies, debt restructuring techniques, and workout transactions. The Group has experience in handling virtually every type of issue that arises in bankruptcy reorganization and liquidation cases as well as in receivership cases, plans of arrangement, loan forbearance and extension agreements, and other non-bankruptcy workouts and restructurings. As the practice of bankruptcy law has become more litigation-oriented in recent years, the Group’s extensive litigation training and experience have been brought to bear on behalf of clients. Attorneys within the Group are experienced in litigating contested chapter 11 confirmation proceedings, lender liability claims, preferences and fraudulent transfers, non-dischargeability actions, setoff and recoupment, subordination, adequate protection, priority claims, debtor-in-possession financing issues, valuation disputes, automatic stay and Section 105 injunctions, and many other contested matters and adversary proceedings before Bankruptcy Courts and handling all levels of appeals.

Many of the Group’s lawyers have jury and non-jury trial experience in state and federal district courts, covering a wide variety of commercial matters. Currently, for example, our attorneys are defending clients against numerous bankruptcy preference claims and representing other clients in prosecuting claims for estoppel and subordination, civil conspiracy, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices and in defending against patent infringement claims, all ancillary to chapter 11 cases. The Group’s attorneys also handle guaranty and foreclosure litigation.

Group Profile

The Group is heavily experienced in business and schooled in economics and accounting. Our attorneys speak and write on various bankruptcy and creditor’s rights topics and conduct bankruptcy seminars for industry groups and individual clients. Members of the Group also serve on various state and national bankruptcy committees and lecture extensively on bankruptcy subjects. The most prestigious professional organization in the field of bankruptcy is the American College of Bankruptcy. Of the six bankruptcy attorneys in the state of North Carolina who are Fellows of the American College of Bankruptcy, three are members of Womble Carlyle. Attorneys of the Group are admitted generally to practice law in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Delaware and the District of Columbia and are specially admitted, on a regular basis, to practice before Bankruptcy Courts in many different jurisdictions concerning particular cases.

The Group is active in the Business Bankruptcy Committee of the American Bar Association, the American Bankruptcy Institute, the Bankruptcy Section of Lex Mundi (an international association of 150 plus law firms and 18,000 plus attorneys), and the bankruptcy sections of state and local bar associations. In addition to being trained as litigators, our bankruptcy lawyers are experienced in alternative dispute resolution, including arbitration and mediation. One of the Group’s attorneys acts as an arbitrator and mediator for the American Arbitration Association regarding commercial and financial disputes.

Our lawyers regularly function as transactional lawyers, handling such projects as negotiating and drafting real estate and personal property leases, license agreements, management agreements, asset and stock sale agreements, bankruptcy financing documents, reorganization plans and disclosure statements. Some of the attorneys in the Group handle sophisticated claims trading transactions and provide bankruptcy remote opinions regarding structured financings.

Office Locations

Bankruptcy attorneys staff each of the Firm’s offices in North Carolina--Charlotte, the Research Triangle (Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill), and the Piedmont Triad (Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point) -- Atlanta, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; Wilmington, Delaware; Northern Virginia; and Washington, DC.

Geographic Scope of Practice

The Bankruptcy Practice Group enjoys a well-known national practice. Lawyers of the Group have appeared for clients in business bankruptcy cases before more than thirty (30) bankruptcy courts, including those located in the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Although national in scope, the Group’s practice is concentrated in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic regions.