Editors’ Note:  The Supreme Court’s Jevic ruling last spring remains a treasure trove of bankruptcy theory, suitable for the novice bankruptcy student and highly instructional for those of us who have practiced in chapter 11 for years.  We at The Bankruptcy Cave like it so much that we will be offering a few more posts in upcoming weeks on the lower courts’ interpretation of Jevic since the spring, the continued efforts in Delaware to sidestep Jevic, and other important learning from the case.  Here, our co-editor Justin Morgan, practicing law just

We at the Bankruptcy Cave are not very surprised by the ruling yesterday in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp.  The Supreme Court in Jevic reviewed a Bankruptcy Court’s decision to approve a settlement (with a distribution of proceeds that contravened the Bankruptcy Code’s priority scheme) in conjunction with dismissing the bankruptcy case of the Chapter 11 debtor Jevic Holding Corp. According to the Bankruptcy Court, because the distributions would occur pursuant to a “structured dismissal” rather than a confirmed plan, the failure to follow the creditor priority scheme did not bar approval.  In short, the Bankruptcy Court did not confirm a plan of reorganization for the Chapter 11 debtor, in which sufficient creditor support can re-order some of the Bankruptcy Code’s priority scheme.  Nor did the Bankruptcy Court convert Jevic’s Chapter 11 case to Chapter 7, in which the Code’s creditor priority scheme can never be changed.