Court Tosses Rittenhouse Owners Bankruptcy Filing

Wilmington and Philadelphia partner Andy Kassner and associate Joe Argentina co-authored an article for The Legal Intelligencer titled, “Court Tosses ’10 Rittenhouse’ Owners Bankruptcy Filing.”

The article discusses the case of Philadelphia Rittenhouse Developers, Inc., a highly contested bankruptcy filing that involved the review and analysis of 25 years of jurisprudence on single-asset real estate cases.

Andy and Joe note that history may, indeed, be repeating itself. Single-asset real estate cases such as this one were prevalent during the savings and loan industry crisis of the late 1980s.

They conclude that the case “provides an example of the steep burden a debtor must overcome to use the bankruptcy process to stay a mortgage foreclosure by a substantially undersecured mortgage lender where the plan is simply a battle over who will sell the collateral and how quickly the real property will be sold.”