 |
Areas of Practice
Bankruptcy and Creditors' Rights
The Firm regularly represents secured and unsecured creditors in enforcing their rights in all state and federal courts in New Mexico, including U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The Firm also regularly appears in most of the tribal courts in New Mexico, as well as some tribal courts outside of New Mexico, and also is licensed to file such actions in the courts of other states, such as Texas, Colorado and California. The Firm has decades of experience in handling both commercial and consumer creditors' rights matters of all sizes and at various stages of collection.
At the pre-litigation stage, the Firm has advised clients about compliance issues, including privacy, lending and collection laws. The Firm has assisted in the drafting and negotiation of forbearance and modification agreements, as well as assisted in the voluntary liquidation of businesses or voluntary surrender of collateral, including deeds in lieu of foreclosure. The Firm also advises clients about issues involving competing creditors, such as the effect of statutory and tax liens.
During the litigation stage, the Firm's broad experience ranges from representing small individual creditors to large, publicly-traded companies, consumer loans to complex commercial loans, and matters involving a few thousand dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars. The Firm has represented creditors in thousands of actions to obtain and enforce money judgments and recover personal property collateral, such as cars, trucks, and mobile homes; business inventory, accounts receivable and "FF&E" (furniture fixtures, and equipment), as well as various types of commercial, heavy, and mining equipment; and livestock and crops. The Firm also represents lenders in real estate foreclosure actions involving a broad range of properties such as office buildings, hotels, ranches, farms, dairies, retail centers, nursing homes, undeveloped land, and residential developments. This experience also includes obtaining injunctive relief and appointing receivers to preserve property.
The Firm also has substantial experience defending creditors against claims brought by individual consumers or commercial borrowers alleging unfair trade practices, truth in lending violations, fraud, and other lender liability theories.
The Firm represents a range of clients in all facets of bankruptcy reorganization and liquidation proceedings. It generally represents creditors in Chapter 7 liquidation, Chapter 13 reorganization, and Chapter 11 reorganization or liquidation proceedings, and handles the filing and prosecution of involuntary bankruptcy petitions, negotiations related to protection of the creditors' interests during the confirmation of plans of reorganization, and negotiation of or litigation related to cash collateral orders, assumption or rejection of executory contracts and 363 sales. The Firm regularly defends fraudulent conveyance and preference actions and other adversary proceedings arising in connection with bankruptcy and other insolvency matters.
Examples of the Firm's experience include:
• Representing lenders in three separate complex foreclosure actions involving nursing homes, including obtaining court-appointed receivers in all three cases, each of which involved millions of dollars in debt.
• Handling large farm and ranch foreclosures and bankruptcy proceedings, large dairy receiverships and bankruptcies, and feed lot and other CAFO loan workouts, foreclosures and bankruptcies.
• After successfully representing a lender in a contentious state-court proceeding that involved lender-liability counterclaims, including obtaining judgment foreclosing on a shopping center securing a commercial debt of more than $5 million, represented the lender in the borrower's heavily contested single-asset real estate Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding in which the borrower sought to reorganize a shopping center and substantially change the use and structure of key assets. Relief from stay was granted as to all of the lender's collateral after an extensive evidentiary hearing.
• Obtaining a preliminary injunction and writ of replevin that allowed a finance company to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars of vehicle collateral from a defaulted new-car dealership.
• Representing a bank in the highly-publicized Chapter 11 bankruptcy case of its borrower, accused of running a Ponzi scheme involving tens of millions of dollars and successfully moving for relief from the automatic stay in order to permit the bank to foreclose its security interest in a commercial building securing a debt of nearly $2 million.
Related Practice Areas
Banking and Financial Services
Commercial Litigation
Indian Law
