bankruptcy court

Like a spirit from beyond the grave, bankrupt Sharper Image Corp. is back and searching for its former gift card holders. But this is a benevolent ghost: Its mission is to start the process of finding and reimbursing them.

Regulators want the nation's big banks to reduce what borrowers owe on underwater mortgages, but they're still focused on solutions that rely on banks to voluntarily do the right thing. But we've already seen that won't work, and history shows what will -- giving bankruptcy judges back the right to cram down mortgages.

These payments fell in 2009 for first time in the U.S. in more than three decades, and while the official government report for fiscal 2010 won't be out for months, it's likely that it, too, saw that downward trend continue. Stubbornly high unemployment is the primary culprit.

In another bit of good economic news, the list of U.S. business bankruptcies will likely get shorter, and probably less distinguished, in 2011, just as it did this year. Still, several factors beyond an improving economy are also at play here.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Martin Glenn denied Wells Fargo's request for permission to foreclose on Tandala Mims's house in the Bronx for a second time on Thursday because he still wasn't satisfied that Wells -- as opposed to some other bank -- had the right to do so.

Loehmann's Holdings Inc., filed for bankruptcy after failing to exchange $110 million of bonds, Bloomberg News reported. "The decline in economic conditions in several markets in which Loehmann's stores are concentrated, mainly California, the Northeast, Midwest and Florida, has had an adverse...

That would be in California, Texas and 25 other states where the lender doesn't have to go to court to foreclose. Except in rare instances, lenders can use fraudulent paperwork with impunity in those states. A closer look at California and Texas shows that's indeed happening.

"I thought I was the biggest thief in the world because I didn't make good on the loans I had taken," Cecilia Deal tells WalletPop about her 2008 Chapter 7 bankruptcy. "It was the worst. When you value honesty and sticking to a commitment and then you consider yourself reneging on that value when...

The federal government could soon have the right to seize control of troubled financials institutions that are deemed "too big to fail," fire their top executives, wipe out shareholders and rewrite the institution's loan agreements. These are among the provisions in a new bill that Representative...

Today, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York granted a petition against Ellen Tracy LLC for a Chapter 7 involuntary petition for bankruptcy. The petition was filed by three creditors seeking nearly $4 million in claims. The creditors were manufacturers of Ellen Tracy...