Supreme Court Case Has Bankruptcy World on Edge
ByJevic Transportation trucks at the company’s Delanco, N.J., headquarters in 2008. The company filed for bankruptcy two years after a leveraged buyout by Sun Capital Partners, which former employees say heaped too much debt on its books. CreditMel Evans/Associated Press
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday in a case that could upend the common practice that ranks lenders, employees and other creditors in order of priority as they try to recover their money when a company files for bankruptcy.
The case has attracted wide attention from academics, workers’ groups and state tax authorities. A decision could affect how much power bankruptcy courts have to approve settlements that do not follow the conventional order of creditor priority and potentially block some parties, in this case the company’s former employees, from any financial recovery…