Financial Restructuring, Bankruptcy, and Creditors' Rights

Practice Area

Our financial restructuring, bankruptcy, and creditors’ rights attorneys are implicitly trusted to represent creditors’ interests when dealing with financially distressed organizations and individuals to deliver optimal returns. Harris Beach draws on the wide range of experience at our firm to service our commercial, lending, and consumer clients who are involved in litigation, foreclosures and bankruptcies throughout the United States. Having served as court appointed trustees, receivers and referees, we are able to assist  our clients who face the countless statutes and complex procedures  to ensure that all financial restructuring, bankruptcy, and creditors’ rights issues are resolved to their best benefit.

Harris Beach offers our clients extensive legal counsel in commercial and financial planning, debt refinancing and restructuring, commercial contract dispute resolution, bankruptcy, foreclosure, commercial and consumer collection, and Uniform Commercial Code compliance. 

Our services include:

Investigations and Litigation

We help our clients investigate internal corporate activities by conducting legal audits and forensic inquiries. Our attorneys represent bankruptcy trustees and examiners, indenture trustees, and other fiduciaries in all areas of disputes. We defend financial institutions and other entities in check fraud and UCC-based disputes.

Clients’ Rights

We analyze our clients’ rights and responsibilities under previously executed or yet to be executed documentation and under applicable statutes, regulations, and judicial decisions.  When applicable, we also address environmental issues. Our attorneys provide alternative solutions to various financial challenges, including all areas of bankruptcy, refinancing, assignments for the benefit of creditors, litigation, pursuit of various debtors, and foreclosures.

Workouts and Bankruptcies

Harris Beach represents our clients in all forms of commercial litigation, in bankruptcy matters, and in foreclosure proceedings, including surplus money proceedings and deficiency judgment collections. We represent banks and lending institutions involved in cash collateral lending situations and those seeking to participate in debtor-in-possession funding opportunities. Our attorneys also represent clients seeking to purchase assets through or outside of the bankruptcy process.  We defend our clients against lender liability claims and in sales of specific credits or entire portfolios of troubled assets.  We also defend our clients against preference and fraudulent conveyance claims brought against them in bankruptcy and state courts.  We restructure classified loans, including preparing forbearance agreements. We represent trustees, successor trustees, receivers and bondholders in troubled municipal or state bond transactions, including foreclosure and restructure under bond indentures and related agreements. 

We also assist with commercial and consumer collection matters to optimize recoveries for our clients.

Distressed Properties

We assist our clients in their efforts to acquire and dispose of distressed property throughout the United States and internationally by offering counsel in foreclosure and bankruptcy matters. Our attorneys also help clients negotiate acquisitions before the seller enters bankruptcy or foreclosure.