Bernstein Shur is home to the largest Business Restructuring and Insolvency practice in northern New England. The group’s attorneys provide practical counsel to clients in complex reorganizations and liquidations under Chapter 11 and Chapter 7, large commercial insolvencies, and related litigation in the state, federal, and bankruptcy courts in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and many other districts in the United States. The firm’s lawyers have played instrumental roles in Maine’s largest bankruptcy cases.

The group’s experience and expertise also includes litigation involving officers and directors’ liability, lender liability matters, out-of-court restructurings (including workouts, assignments for the benefit of creditors, and receiverships), and commercial and business tort litigation.  Clients of the group include business debtors, creditors’ committees, parties acquiring distressed businesses, and other parties affected by insolvency proceedings. Business Restructuring and Insolvency attorneys work regularly with colleagues in the firm’s Business Law, Mergers & Acquisitions, Finance, Intellectual Property, and Environmental and Natural Resources practice groups to structure sophisticated transactions and to provide strategic legal and business counsel to financially distressed entities and those who deal with them.

The group’s two senior members are Fellows of the American College of Bankruptcy, the practice area’s highest honor. The group’s attorneys are also members of the American Bankruptcy Institute and the Turnaround Management Association, as well as other professional associations dedicated to insolvency issues and restoration of corporate value.  Two attorneys are certified in Business Bankruptcy by the American Board of Certification.  Group members have also been recognized in both Best Lawyers in America and Chambers USA, the definitive directory of business attorneys in the United States.

Recent representative matters include:

• Pegasus Satellite and Television:  co-counsel for the debtor-in-possession in the largest Chapter 11 reorganization in Maine’s history, involving a major seller of satellite television services and twenty affiliates.
• Great Northern Paper:  Great Northern Paper was at one time the largest independent paper producer in the United States.  Bernstein Shur represented stalking horse bidder in potential acquisition of company during chapter 11 case, including in a successful defense of its significant break-up fee on appeal.
• Androscoggin Energy LLC:  Bernstein Shur represents the debtor in the reorganization of a co-generation facility.  This is a complex cross-border matter with proceedings in the US and Canada that resulted in a precedent-setting decision in the Ontario Court of Appeal regarding so-called “eligible financial contracts.”
• Irving Tanning:  The firm represented one the largest domestic manufacturers of leather in successive Chapter 11 cases over four years.  After an original bootstrap reorganization, and despite difficult business conditions and significant opposition by the secured creditor, the company was able to identify a going-concern purchaser and to confirm a plan of reorganization in less than four months. 
• Lincoln Paper and Tissue:  Bernstein Shur represented a group of investors that acquired a paper and tissue mill that had been abandoned by the Chapter 7 trustee after the case was converted from a Chapter 11 case that lasted several years.  The sale negotiations involved multiple creditor constituencies, and the acquisition financing was complex.  Despite all the legal and business hurdles, the acquisition was successfully completed and the client recently added the first new paper machine in the State of Maine in many years.

Case study:  A Turnaround Against All Odds