The Steven J. Baum P.C. law firm, which has offices in Amherst, N.Y., and Westbury on Long Island, has filed papers with government agencies notifying them that it plans to close. It made the filings under a federal law requiring employers to provide notice before mass layoffs.

“Disrupting the livelihoods of so many dedicated and hardworking people is extremely painful, but the loss of so much business left us no choice but to file these notices,” said Mr. Baum in a statement issued on Monday.

A firm spokesman said it would have no further comment beyond the release.Mr. Baum and his colleagues have come under fire for their foreclosure-related legal work. They are one of numerous firms across the country that represent banks and services in trying to foreclose on the millions of homeowners who have defaulted on their loans.

Some of these firms’ aggressive, and, in some cases, duplicitous practices, have earned them the moniker “foreclosure mills.”The Baum firm’s tactics, which included the “robo-signing” of documents, has been among the most criticized.

Last year, a state-court judge in Brooklyn called one foreclosure filing from the Baum firm that he said contained numerous falsities “incredible, outrageous, ludicrous and disingenuous.”Last month, the firm struck a settlement with the United States attorney in Manhattan, which had been investigating the Baum firm and whether, on behalf of its lender clients, it filed misleading legal papers to expedite foreclosures.

The firm agreed to pay a $2 million penalty and vowed change its practices to resolve the case.

Read the full article here: Foreclosure Firm Steven J. Baum to Close Down – NYTimes.com.

Sbarro will give ownership of the reorganized company to senior lenders owed about $176 million under the proposal approved today by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley C. Chapman in Manhattan.

The company, based in Melville, New York, started as an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, New York, in 1956 and has more than 1,000 company-owned and franchised restaurants, according to its court filings.Sbarro, acquired in 2007 by the private-equity firm MidOcean Partners, filed for bankruptcy in April, blaming reduced consumer traffic at shopping malls and increased competition at food courts. Increases in ingredient costs also led to higher costs, it said.

The bankruptcy plan gives first-lien lenders a recovery of from 69 percent to 95 percent on their claims, according to a plan description. The plan gives no recovery for second-lien claims of about $34 million and general unsecured creditors with as much as $173 million in claims, according to court documents.

Read the full article here: Sbarro Fast-Food Pizza Chain Wins Court Approval for Bankruptcy-Exit Plan – Bloomberg.

In the process, Fox slammed Major League Baseball as “Prime Ticket’s former ally” and claimed the only reason Dodgers owner Frank McCourt wants to sell the team’s television rights now is to put “value rightfully belonging to Prime Ticket in his own pocket.”

On Nov. 1, McCourt and MLB reached an agreement under which he would sell the Dodgers and the league would not oppose an effort by McCourt to market the team’s television rights.The Dodgers sued Fox earlier Wednesday, accusing the broadcaster of interfering with that marketing process; Fox previously sued the Dodgers for alleged breach of contract.

The Dodgers have asked the court to declare unenforceable a provision of the current Fox contract that forbids the team from negotiating with other media outlets before Nov. 30, 2012.In its filing, Fox called the sale agreement a “secret pact,” noted MLB previously had opposed the TV rights sale, and complained that the agreement has neither been provided to Fox nor filed with the court in the subsequent two weeks.

Fox asked that the hearing for approval of a TV rights sale be delayed beyond the scheduled Nov. 30 date.The sale agreement explicitly leaves the TV rights decision to the new team owner. Accordingly, the Dodgers have proposed proceeding with the marketing process — claiming that prospective owners would know the value of media rights before bidding on the team — but letting the new owner decide whether to sign whatever TV deal might be negotiated.”It is … wholly unclear why a new owner would not just engage in such negotiations itself,” the Fox filing read. “The only apparent explanation is that the entire point of the process is to allow McCourt, now with the agreement of MLB, to obtain the proceeds of such a deal for himself as he brokers the team.”

Read the complete article here: Fox wants Dodgers’ bankruptcy case dismissed, slams McCourt, MLB [UPDATED] – latimes.com.

The servicers of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae-owned mortgages can no longer refer foreclosure cases to the Baum firm, though the firm will retain the cases already referred to it. Freddie Mac’s bar on new referrals also includes bankruptcies and was announced on Nov. 10.

Fannie Mae’s decision to bar new referrals was confirmed yesterday. Spokesmen for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not comment on the reasons behind the decisions.Steven J. Baum called the decisions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “unfortunate.” “It seemed to be based more on politics than performance,” he said in an e-mailed statement, declining to elaborate.

The embattled firm has come under fire most recently for a 2010 Halloween office party where staff dressed as homeless people. The firm has apologized but Congressman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., has requested information on the firm’s practices and the party. Meanwhile, the Southern District U.S. attorney last month announced the settlement of a six-month probe of the firm that will result in a $2 million fine and an overhaul of its practices NYLJ, Oct. 7.

“The law firm and its management and employees are going through a very difficult period because of the intense scrutiny of late and while people want to think the mortgage foreclosure crisis is because of the firm and other law firms that is not the case,” Mr. Baum said.

“The firm has no control over what others might do as far as the business is concerned; the focus at the moment is to do the best job possible for its clients.”The Baum firm was one of six New York state firms on Freddie Mac’s list and one of eight on Fannie Mae’s.

Separately, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in the process of dismantling their attorney networks after a transition period NYLJ, Oct. 20.

via Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Ban Baum From Foreclosures.

While they were co-owners of Capmark in May 2009, a group of Goldman units used their influence to help convince Capmark to refinance $1.5 billion in unsecured debt owed to Goldman, according to the lawsuit filed today in Manhattan federal court.

The refinancing allowed Goldman to collect $147 million, including $7 million in cash, based on the new secured loan, according to the lawsuit.“Despite these conflicts and close connections — indeed, as a result of the influence and insider status that its multiple simultaneous roles created — Goldman Sachs actively and directly participated in internal meetings and discussions that led to the secured credit facility, which gave it preferential treatment as a creditor,” Capmark claimed in the lawsuit.

Read the complete article via Goldman Sachs Sued by Capmark to Recover $147 Million – Bloomberg.

“The decline in consumer bankruptcies is the residue of a sustained debt deleveraging by U.S. households,” said ABI Executive Director Samuel J. Gerdano.

Business filings decreased 18 percent for the nine-month period ending September 30, 2011, to 36,385 from the 43,016 filings in the same period in 2010. Chapter 7 business liquidations also fell by 18 percent, as there were 25,672 in the first nine months of 2011 compared with the 30,192 business chapter 7 filings during the same period in 2010. Chapter 11 business reorganizations registered the sharpest decrease, as the 7,417 filings during the first nine months of 2011 represented a 22 percent drop from the 9,058 total chapter 11 business filings during the same period in 2010. Total business filings decreased 5 percent from 12,304 in the second quarter 2011 April 1-June 30 to 11,705 in the third quarter 2011 July 1-September 30.

Read the full ABI press release here: American Bankruptcy Institute | Total U.S. FY 2011 Bankruptcies Down 8 Percent over FY 2010; Filings Fall Across All Chapters.

Last summer, Moody’s Analytics pronounced fears of an education spending bubble “not without merit.” Last spring, investor and PayPal founder Peter Thiel called attention to his claims of an education bubble by awarding two dozen young entrepreneurs $100,000 each NOT to attend college.

Recent weeks have seen another spate of “bubble” headlines — student loan defaults up, tuition rising another 8.3 percent this year and finally, out Thursday, a new report estimating that average student debt for borrowers from the college class of 2010 has passed $25,000.And all that on top of a multi-year slump in the job-market for new college graduates.So do those who warn of a bubble have a case?

The hard part, of course, is that a bubble is never apparent until it bursts. But the short answer is this: There are worrisome trends. A degree is an asset whose value can change over time. Borrowing to pay for it is risky, and borrowing is way up. The stakes are high. You can usually walk away from a house. Not so a student loan, which can’t even be discharged in bankruptcy.

But there are also important differences between a potential “student loan bubble” and an “education bubble.” Furthermore, many economists think the whole concept of a bubble is a misleading way to think about what’s happening, and may actually distract from the real problems. College affordability is a serious issue, but it’s a different one. Borrowing for college and borrowing for, say, a house, are fundamentally different in important ways.

Read the full article via Will Student Loans Be the Next Bubble to Burst?.

via Bar Pass Rate Up Slightly for First-Time Takers.

Defendants in lawsuits by trustee Irving Picard including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and the New York Mets owners have asked district judges to decide whether Picard has a right to sue them, and for how much. They seek an “escape hatch” from bankruptcy court, which Congress intended to handle such cases as clawbacks of money withdrawn from a Ponzi scheme, the trustee said yesterday.

Picard made the statements in a filing after Melvyn Weiss, the disbarred co-founder of the law firm Milberg LLP, tried to move a lawsuit to district court. Higher court rulings that challenged bankruptcy judges’ power, including in the Anna Nicole Smith case, have enabled Picard’s targets to try to get a hearing elsewhere.

“With the floodgates fully flung open, more and more parties are blatantly engaging in forum shopping,” Picard said in the filing. “Through this procedural gamesmanship, the Weiss defendants — along with the defendants in the 246 other actions presently before this court — are eviscerating the bankruptcy court’s nearly three years of hard work,” he said, referring to the start of the Madoff firm’s liquidation in 2008 after the con man’s arrest.

Read the full article here: Madoff Trustee Says Defendants ‘Eviscerate’ Court, ‘Pervert’ Law – Bloomberg.

Bankruptcy Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule (28 U.S.C. § 1930)

Current Fee Proposed New Fee
Certification $9.00 $11.00
Exemplification $18.00 $21.00
Audio Recording $26.00 $30.00
Amended Bankruptcy Schedules $26.00 $30.00
Record Search $26.00 $30.00
Adversary Proceeding Fee $250.00 $293.00
Document Filing/Indexing $39.00 $46.00
Title 11 Administrative Fee $39.00 $46.00
Record Retrieval Fee $45.00 $53.00
Returned Check Fee $45.00 $53.00
Notice of Appeal Fee $250.00 $293.00
Motion to Lift/Stay Fee $150.00 $176.00

The Bankruptcy Court’s notice can be found here: http://www.nyeb.uscourts.gov/announcements/Miscellaneous_Fees_Increase_11-01.pdf.