*SPOILER**
The plaintiffs-- the dead boys parents-- must have gotten SOME money
don't you think? I mean there must have been more than 50 mil in
a company that big paying team of lawyers $1000 an hour.
Does anyone know how bankruptcy works??
I think bankruptcy works in the way that you are officially broke and all your assets are taken away from you. Because of this no one can file suit against you since you are already bankrupted.
I don't really know the law works so it's best if you do a little bit of digging :P
In the book the company was worth around $400 million dollars with about 100 mill in cash saved for a rainy day. Since they won the lawsuit over hunderds and hunmdereds of lawsuits stopping popping all over USA and they were also being investigated by several states for shady practices.
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Very nice explanation of bankruptcy, Harvardboy. However, in answer to the original question, the Blacks weren't interested in a whole lot of money, since it was already too late to save Donny Ray's life by the time they filed suit. Dot's whole point was to punish the company by putting them out of business.
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Remember that at the end after they won that there were multiple class-action suits being filed.
The company would now be vulnerable to 100s of millions in law suits and had to file bankruptcy before they had to start paying out.
- "Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television." - David Letterman
I've thought about the appeal issue too. Whenever you win a big lawsuit, you can expect it to get tied up in appeals for years afterward. I think if I won a big lawsuit, I would tell my lawyer to offer to settle for half if they wrote the check the same day.
Fredd
There would be nothing.
All lawsuits filed 90 days before the filing of a bankruptcy are considered 'in expectation of' bankruptcy and would be thrown out. There would be so many 'creditors' of an embezzled company starting with employee wages, accounts payable, bondholders, etc etc there would likely be nothing left to divvy up. Remember that with recent large companies going bankrupt one person isn't embezzling alone - but usually in collusion with other who together can make it happen.
As I said 'there would be nothing'.
Rudy could file an Adversary Proceeding arguing that the Black's claim was due to a malicious or wrongful act of Great Benefit and thus deny a discharge. This was a wrongful death case so it is not too far to assume that they could possibly win and the debt owed could not be discharged in the bankruptcy, however, as has been noted, there would not be any money regardless to pay the debt owed.
I'm sorry I don't speak computer-ebonics, please type in English.
That's true, flobiwan, but here in New York you get 9% statutory interest from the date of the judgment or the date of the breach. So, in the Black's instance, if the case had been brought in New York, putting aside the whole bankruptcy issue, they would have collected 9% from the date of the first denial of the claim, at least a year before the judgment. And 9% each year after that. That is money you might want to let ride - you're not going to get a guaranteed 9% anywhere.
I think the reason it is 9% is to dissuade the losing side from sitting on the appeal for so long, and to encourage the parties to settle for the number reached in the verdict - or at least a helluva lot closer to the number than half of the verdict.
I asked the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.