Creditors' Rights & Bankruptcy

Experience

Our experience includes the workout and restructuring of problem loans, as well as litigation in the state and federal trial courts and appellate courts. More recently our firm has engaged in mediation and arbitration of our clients’ rights through alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. We have particular experience in representation of secured and unsecured creditors in bankruptcy reorganizations and liquidations, as well as judicial and nonjudicial foreclosures.

Agricultural Lending

Our firm is one of very few firms in California that provides specialized expertise when the lender’s collateral base involves the use of federal, state and other water rights and entitlements, and the use of federal farm subsidy benefits. As a result, we are uniquely able to handle all aspects of evaluating and perfecting interests in sources of water supplies and subsidy payments, which are necessary to maintain the value and viability of agricultural real property collateral. Our attorneys often assist in loan origination when the security documentation requires these highly specialized areas, or when the transaction is particularly complicated. The firm has developed California loan documentation form packages for a number of lenders, particularly for agricultural production lending.

Environmental Law Expertise

Our environmental attorneys assist in evaluating and quantifying the risk of any environmental impairment to collateral. Long before the California legislature passed the law allowing secured lenders to avoid environmentally impaired property, the firm was involved in a number of structured settlements that allowed lenders to obtain market value from impaired properties without being the chain of title.

Non-Performing Loan Transactions

A large portion of the firm’s practice is devoted to the workout and restructure of non-performing loans. We have documented and implemented extensive loan workouts through complex deeds in lieu of foreclosure, trustee’s sales, and judicial foreclosure cases, including receiverships and bankruptcy litigation. The firm has implemented creditors’ remedies in real and personal property in a wide variety of context through negotiation, collection actions, and bankruptcy. We have also negotiated and documented the sales of both real and personal property after title has been obtained through foreclosure.

General Banking Business and Litigation

In addition to enforcement of secured and unsecured loans, Baker Manock & Jensen has represented large and small financial institutions in litigation involving general banking business. These include dischargeability litigation in bankruptcy, cases involving the theft of cash and other assets from bankruptcy estates, assorted types of check clearing and negotiation cases, and cases involving false financial statements.