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Fund wants identities of 2 unnamed creditors disclosed
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Posted on May 04 2012
By Ferdie de la Torre
Reporter
Reporter
The NMI Retirement Fund is insisting that the two unnamed retirees that want the Fund’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition dismissed must disclose their identities before further proceedings are conducted on their motion.
The Fund, through counsel Jeremy B. Coffey, wrote a letter Wednesday to U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Hawaii Chief Bankruptcy Judge Robert J. Faris, seeking clarification regarding disclosures of the unnamed retirees’ identities.
Coffey said the Fund believes there are questions whether attorney Bruce Jorgensen, as the unnamed retirees’ counsel, in fact represents these creditors and whether he represents parties in interest under the Bankruptcy Code.
In previous proceedings before the U.S. District Court for the NMI, the Fund has challenged the propriety of the two unnamed creditors participating in the case anonymously, Coffey said.
To date, he said, two different district judges have agreed that the two unnamed creditors have failed to establish a need for anonymity.
The Fund, Coffey said, believes disclosure of the identities of the two unnamed creditors is necessary and appropriate in that the positions advocated by these purported creditors are at odds with the interests of the other creditors.
Disclosure of their identifies, Coffey said, could reveal that the two unnamed creditors are either not actual creditors of the Fund and do not have standing to appear in the bankruptcy case, or holders of claims being disputed by the Fund.
Jorgensen’s co-counsel, Margery Bronster, in a letter to Coffey dated April 26, 2012, stated that their clients (the unnamed retirees) are believed to be in the same situation as other retiree beneficiaries of the Fund in a pending federal court class action.
Bronster said that because these unnamed creditors only represent other creditors in the bankruptcy case in their status as “class representatives,” they were not required to file the disclosures required by Bankruptcy Rule 2019.
Bronster earlier asked the court to dismiss the Fund’s bankruptcy petition, saying the Fund is a “governmental unit” and an agency of the Commonwealth” and therefore is not a “person” eligible to file such a petition under the Bankruptcy Code.
