Filing For Bankruptcy

John Ventura's on a mission - a mission to inform consumers about their credit, debt and rights in a bankruptcy. The director of the Texas Consumer Complaint Center at the Houston Law School (where he is an adjunct professor) is also a board-certified bankruptcy attorney with 30 years of experience. And he is alarmed by what he sees going on inside and out of bankruptcy court. Since the change in the bankruptcy laws in 2005, Ventura said, the number of bankruptcy filings has increased about 40 percent.

The family owners of The Inn at the Black Olive in Fells Point hope a bankruptcy filing Thursday will give them time to try to attract investors and keep operating the 2-year-old boutique hotel, their bankruptcy attorney said. The Black Olive Development Co. LLC's Chapter 7 filing in Baltimore's U.S. Bankruptcy Court prevented a planned foreclosure auction of the 12-suite luxury inn on South Caroline Street from going forward Thursday morning. Chapter 7 permits an orderly liquidation of assets to repay creditors, but the case could be converted to a Chapter 11 reorganization if the company finds investors.

Licensees of a Towson restaurant have been fined $1,500 and ordered to stop serving alcohol for seven days -- penalties that are subject to review by federal bankruptcy officials.The Baltimore County liquor board levied the penalties against Lambis I. Platsis and Konstantin I. Platsis, owners of Mykonos restaurant, for violations in 1990 and 1991, and for an incident Aug. 8 when an undercover county police cadet was served alcohol without being asked to produce identification.Testimony at Monday's board hearing indicated the owners have addressed many of the complaints since filing for bankruptcy protection.

A Bel Air payroll company under investigation for allegedly not forwarding clients' tax payments to tax collectors has filed for bankruptcy. AccuPay Inc. filed a petition for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore, listing 95 creditors and debts of between $100,001 and $500,000. Chapter 7 allows for an orderly liquidation of a company's assets to pay off creditors. A bankruptcy attorney for the company's owners said Wednesday that his clients believe they will have funds available to pay creditors.

I listened last week to Ravens players telling area fans not to sell their tickets to Steelers fans, and that if they did it was a lack of respect, and that those who did weren't true fans. Sometimes, players live in their own little worlds. Outside the locker room, and in the real world where we live, a lot of people are getting laid off or taking pay cuts. A lot of companies are filing for bankruptcy. So if a fan sold his tickets and made a few bucks for Christmas this year or made some extra money to pay a few bills, good for him or her. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.

London Fog Industries Inc., founded in Baltimore more than 75 years ago and now headquartered in Eldersburg, filed for bankruptcy yesterday and said it will close 115 of its 140 stores nationwide.Company officials said the Chapter 11 filing is an attempt to restructure operations and redefine the company's mission and should not be seen as the beginning of the end of one of the world's best-known clothing labels.The company narrowly escaped a bankruptcy filing in 1995 by restructuring debt and streamlining operations.

THOMAS W. REDMOND'S personal financial troubles have given opponents of the Anne Arundel County councilman an opening they hope to exploit in next year's elections. Even though Mr. Redmond looks much more vulnerable after filing for bankruptcy and being slapped with a contempt citation, it is too early to predict how his personal situation will play out politically.Declaring bankruptcy does not carry the stigma it once did. Maryland had 26,739 filings -- with non-business filings making up more than 94 percent -- in the 12 months that ended March 31, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

BOSTON - The Archdiocese of Boston is likely to declare bankruptcy as a way to grapple with the hundreds of pending lawsuits filed against the church in the clergy sex abuse crisis, a senior financial adviser to the archdiocese said Sunday. The archdiocese has been studying the possibility of filing for bankruptcy for months, and The Boston Globe reported Sunday that financial advisers to Cardinal Bernard F. Law unanimously supported the idea because it would be less expensive than continuing to battle the lawsuits in court.

WASHINGTON -- It is not a crime for elected politicians to seek campaign donations from those for whom they do specific favors in legislation or government action, the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, yesterday.The federal crime of "extortion," the court declared, only occurs when a politician uses actual threats to get money or makes a direct deal to get paid in return for an official favor.The court said it would require a "quid pro quo" to prosecute an elected official for extortion when money has been paid as a campaign donation.

THOUGH Congress and the president want to make it harder for consumers to wipe out their debts through bankruptcy, some lawyers and judges are taking a different approach: They are trying to make sure that people never get into financial straits in the first place. They are doing so by reaching out to those on the verge of getting their first credit cards - high school juniors and seniors and college freshmen. Lawyers and judges around the country visit classrooms and tell students tales from the bankruptcy court front.

The company affiliated with developer Patrick Turner that was planning to redevelop the waterfront of the Westport neighborhood in southwest Baltimore has filed for bankruptcy. Inner Harbor West LLC, the subject of a Chapter 7 involuntary bankruptcy petition filed by two creditors earlier this month, has asked a federal judge to convert the case to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to documents filed Tuesday in Maryland's bankruptcy court. If the change is allowed, Inner Harbor West LLC could reorganize with trustee oversight and develop a plan to repay creditors.

Mental health rehabilitation and addiction treatment center Baltimore Behavioral Health Inc. has filed for bankruptcy protection because it owes more than $5.5 million to creditors and estimates its assets are less than $500,000, according to federal court filings. The center will continue to operate during the Chapter 11 restructuring, said CEO Terry T. Brown. "There's a need for us to be here," Brown said of the nonprofit company's West Pratt Street facility, on the northern edge of the Pigtown neighborhood of Southwest Baltimore.

The pharmacy at the center of a fungal meningitis outbreak that has hit 19 states said Friday it has declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Massachusetts. The New England Compounding Center also said it plans to establish a fund to compensate those affected by the outbreak. The outbreak has sickened 620 people and killed 39. In Maryland, 25 people have gotten ill and two have died. The outbreak is linked to three lots of a steroid injection used to treat back pain that clinics and medical facilities bought from New England Compounding Center.

Baltimore-based Vertis Holdings Inc., at one time the largest U.S. producer of advertising inserts in newspapers, plans to sell itself to a Wisconsin printing company for $258.5 million through an auction in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Vertis filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware Wednesday. It also sought court approval to sell its assets to Quad/Graphics, which produces retail advertising inserts and direct marketing and in-store marketing campaigns. It is the third bankruptcy-law filing in five years for Vertis, which also sought the court's protection to reorganize its finances in 2008 and 2010.

A Baltimore landlord with a long history of violating lead-paint poisoning laws was sentenced Wednesday to a year and a day in prison by a federal judge, who called the now-bankrupt businessman a "scofflaw. " Cephus Murrell, 69, of Catonsville sat impassively in U.S. District Court as Judge Benson E. Legg imposed the sentence, which included six months' home detention after release from prison. Murrell owned and managed 175 rental units in Baltimore, officials said, all built before lead paint was banned.

The Sparrows Point steel mill stumbled into bankruptcy for the second time in 11 years as its owner filed Thursday for Chapter 11 protection from creditors as it prepares to idle operations and cut nearly 2,000 jobs at the plant next week. RG Steel LLC said in documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware that it owed more than $1 billion and had run out of cash, giving the first look at the privately held company's troubled finances. It also has $1 billion in assets. The company is seeking a buyer for Sparrows Point as well as its two steel plants in Wheeling, W.Va., and Warren, Ohio, and other steel-related operations, as it copes with a "liquidity crisis.

Many Americans are swamped by debt, but more than a million of them this year likely will conclude that their bills are beyond their control. They will seek a fresh start through the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Here, creditors are kept at bay, debt collectors are silenced and, potentially, most of a filer's IOUs can be vanquished. Nearly 1.62 million personal bankruptcies were filed in the 12-month period that ended in September, a 2.6 percent drop from the year before, according to the most recent figures.

I notice most personal finance planners discourage filing for bankruptcy. Are there any situations where you think it's appropriate? I am 30 years old, earn about $45,000 a year and have more than $30,000 in credit-card debt in addition to $9,000 in student loans. Some of the debt is the result of a gambling problem I had for a time, but the vast majority was accumulated this last year and a half as a result of a divorce and custody battle. I now have sole custody of my daughter and have trimmed my monthly expenses as much as possible, yet can barely manage to pay the monthly minimums on my credit cards.

The owner of an Anne Arundel County trucking company put out of business late last year by federal safety officials has filed for bankruptcy protection again, listing more than $3.3 million in debt. Mark David Gunther Sr., owner of Harmans-based Gunthers Transport LLC, filed under Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore on May 15. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration called Gunthers Transport an "imminent hazard" to the public when it ordered the company's trucks off the road on Nov. 16. When the company tried to reconstitute itself weeks later as Clock Transport LLC, it, too, was ordered closed.