Archdiocese of Milwaukee Bankruptcy Inches Forward

Go here to read what the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports about the position of the creditors and the abuse victims in the bankruptcy of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The Journal-Sentinel also links to the 154-page Disclosure Statement submitted by the Archdiocese with the strike-throughs and additions proposed by the creditors' committee. A disclosure statement, by the way, is the document that explains, ostensibly in language a non-lawyer can understand, what the plan of reorganization of a Chapter 11 debtor (like the Archdiocese) proposes to do.

There's more detail in the Disclosure Statement than any non-bankruptcy specialist would wish to read. I want only to make three points. First, local (Milwaukee) counsel for the creditors' committee is my former firm, Howard, Solochek & Weber (or what's left of it). Second, the creditors' committee takes some positions in the disclosure statement on which it has already lost. And third, this striking assertion:

The Committee ... contends that solicitations of rejections of the Plan is not limited to the information contained in this Disclosure Statement.

Only a bankruptcy wonk would notice this and that includes me not only because I believe that facts asserted when soliciting votes (distinguished from conclusions drawn from those facts) should limited to those in the disclosure statement per Bankruptcy Code §§ 1125(b) and 1126(e) but also because I took the opposite position when representing the creditors' committee in the Zaks Stores, Inc. bankruptcy back in the mid-1990s.

I have no particular interest in the ultimate outcome of the Chapter 11 of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee but I hope to track it for developments that I (and perhaps no one else) think are interesting.