Sealing the Deal: Negotiating, Documenting and Consummating Settlements in Bankruptcy

Judge Elizabeth S. Stong has served as U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Eastern District of New York since 2003. Before entering on duty, she was a litigation partner and associate at Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York, an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and law clerk to Hon. A. David Mazzone, U.S. District Judge in the District of Massachusetts.

Judge Stong is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Council and Membership Committee of the American Law Institute. She is also a Trustee and member of the Executive Committee of the Practising Law Institute, a member of the board of P.R.I.M.E. Finance, an international dispute resolution organization that promotes judicial education in complex financial disputes, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Harvard Law School Association of New York City. She is co-chair of the New York Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, serves on the ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service, represents the ABA’s National Conference of Federal Trial Judges in the ABA House of Delegates, and is a member of the Council of the ABA Business Law Section. She serves as co-chair of the New York City Bar Council on the Profession, a member of the New York County Lawyers Association Justice Center Advisory Board, and a board member of the New York Law Institute. She is an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and St. John’s University School of Law.

Judge Stong is active in international judicial capacity building and has trained judges on five continents, including in Central Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Arabian Peninsula, as an expert with the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and U.S. Department of Commerce Commercial Law Development Program. She has also consulted with the Supreme Court of China and People’s High Courts in Beijing and Guangzhou, and has participated in judicial workshops in Cambodia, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. She is an elected member of the European Law Institute and an Adviser to the ELI-UNIDROIT Principles of Transnational Civil Procedure project.

Judge Stong previously served as President of the Harvard Law School Association, chair of the International Judicial Relations Committee of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, Vice President of the Federal Bar Council, Vice President of the Board of Directors of New York City Bar Fund Inc. and the City Bar Justice Center, Chair of the New York City Bar’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee and Vice Chair of its Judiciary Committee, the Board of Directors of the International Insolvency Institute, and an officer of the ABA Business Law Section. She was also a member of the board of MFY Legal Services, Inc., one of the largest providers of free civil legal services to low-income residents of New York City, and served on the ABA’s Standing Committee on the American Judicial System, Standing Committee on Continuing Legal Education, Commission on Women in the Profession, and Commission on Homelessness and Poverty.

Judge Stong received the Brooklyn Bar Association’s Freda Nisnewitz Award for Pro Bono Service, the New York Institute of Credit’s Hon. Cecelia H. Goetz Award, the ABA Business Law Section’s Glass Cutter Award, and the MFY Legal Services Scales of Justice Award, among other recognitions.

Judge Stong received her A.B. magna cum laude and her J.D. from Harvard University.

As a registered mediator in the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts for the Southern District of New York, the District of Delaware and the District of Massachusetts, Judge Kornreich has a multifaceted approach to mediation. Held in high esteem by the bar for his tactful mediation expertise, he is skilled at delivering comprehensive and pragmatic solutions to difficult cases.

His versatility in the courtroom is thanks to a diverse background, which includes 30 years of reorganization practice and 14 years on the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maine, mostly as Chief Judge. Judge Kornreich served on the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the First Circuit and as a visiting Judge in the Districts of Delaware and New Hampshire. He is widely recognized for his work as both a trial and appellate judge, presiding over many of the largest and most complex reorganizations in Maine history including Great Northern Paper and Androscoggin Energy, a Canadian cross-border natural gas case. Most recently, he was the American judge in Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, the jointly administered cross-border bankruptcy cases resulting from the tragic Lac-Megantic fire. Those cases have had international ramifications with respect to the transcontinental shipment of petroleum by rail.

Craig has been a Principal of the firm (and its predecessors) for 20 years with primary responsibility for the completion of all tax and bankruptcy engagements. His duties are business development; accounting and consulting services; business advisory services; bankruptcy matters including: taxation and accounting; valuation and insolvency; search for preference and fraudulent transactions; and expert witness, and records reconstruction. He has been employed as an accountant for Chapter 7 and 11 Trustees, and has been retained as a Liquidating Supervisor and a Liquidating Agent.

Jeanne P. Darcey is a partner and co-leader of the Bankruptcy & Restructuring Group in the Boston office. Since beginning her practice in 1983, Ms. Darcey has had high-level and varied experience representing debtors, secured and unsecured creditors, indenture trustees and bondholders in out-of-court workouts, liquidations, creditor assignments and Chapter 11 and Chapter 15 proceedings. Ms. Darcey also advises clients acquiring assets of distressed entities, both in and out of bankruptcy. She often consults on corporate transactions with respect to structuring transactions and advises clients about litigation and other strategic alternatives involving high-yield or defaulted securities and rights of licensors and licensees of intellectual property in bankruptcy.

Ms. Darcey lectures often on bankruptcy issues. In addition to speaking on domestic bankruptcy issues, in July, 2013, she spoke on a panel titled "Debtor Migration: Intercontinental, Inter-District and Back," at the American Bankruptcy Institute's Northeast Bankruptcy Conference. In June, 2012 she presented "Restructuring of the Americas: Opportunities for Investment," at the American Bar Association Section of International Law meeting. In March, 2012 she spoke at the American Bar Association Section of Business Law Spring meeting on "Lessons Learned from Around the World – Recent Bondholder and Indenture Trustees issues from the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Mexico and Beyond." Ms. Darcey has also lectured and moderated panels for The World Law Group, the Massachusetts Bar Association, the American Bankruptcy Institute and the International Women’s Insolvency & Restructuring Confederation.

Ms. Darcey currently serves as co-chair for the Trust Indentures sub-committee of the American Bar Association's Business Bankruptcy Session. She has also served as the co-chair of the Bankruptcy Section of the Boston Bar Association (2012-2014). She previously served as chair of the Corporate Restructuring and Bankruptcy Practice Group of the World Law Group (2008-2009) and as vice-chair on the Boston Bar Association’s Task Force on Financial Literacy, a joint undertaking by Boston bankruptcy lawyers and the local bankruptcy judges. The task force develops and implements a multi-unit program for Massachusetts high school students, focusing on understanding personal finance, budgeting and credit card use and the consequences of credit card abuse. Ms. Darcey continues to participate in the program as a volunteer lecturer.

She also served on the First Circuit’s Merit Selection Panel with respect to the bankruptcy judgeship opening created by the retirement of Hon. Carol J. Kenner.

Taruna Garg is a commercial litigation attorney practicing in the areas of business litigation, bankruptcy and creditors’ rights. She represents individual and corporate clients in a wide range of disputes including breach of contract, lender liability, financial workout, complex tort litigation and antitrust matters throughout all stages of litigation, settlement and alternative dispute processes. In her bankruptcy practice, Taruna represents trustees, debtors (and their directors, officers and employees), lenders and other companies as secured or unsecured creditors in a variety of complex matters, including liquidation, reorganization, financial workout, turnover, fraudulent transfer, preference and mortgage-related actions. Taruna has successfully prosecuted and defended cases involving breach of fiduciary duty against directors and officers, preferential transfers, fraudulent transfer actions, lender liability, protection of collateral, foreclosure, asset allocation and breach of contract disputes.

In 2017, Ms. Garg was recognized by the Fairfield County Business Journal as one of Fairfield County’s Top “40 Under 40” Businesspeople, and in 2012 she was named a “New Leader in the Law” by the Connecticut Law Tribune. In May of 2010, Taruna was chosen as a Diversity Hero by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and in April of 2009, was selected by the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women as an Unsung Heroine. Taruna has also been selected as a “Rising Star” by Boston Magazine every year since 2007.

Taruna earned her Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, cum laude, from Boston University in 1999. She graduated from the Boston University School of Law in 2002, where she served as an editor with the American Journal of Law and Medicine.