Daniel A. Rubens

Partner

New York

Read full biography at www.orrick.com

Daniel Rubens handles high stakes appeals and critical motions in courts across the nation, with a focus on the financial services and technology sectors.

Danny's practice focuses on appellate litigation. He has led the drafting on dozens of appellate briefs, and regularly argues appeals in state and federal courts. Danny has extensive trial litigation experience as well, with an emphasis on dispositive motions, preserving appellate issues, and developing creative legal strategies.

Danny’s work has covered a wide range of subject areas, including securities, bankruptcy, intellectual property, arbitration, class actions, and criminal law. He has a deep understanding of appeals and critical motions in financial services litigation, and in recent years has played a key role in representing financial institutions in major RMBS cases brought by trustees, investors, and monoline insurers. His financial services clients include Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Mr. Cooper, and Ocwen. He also represents leading technology companies in precedent-setting cases involving antitrust law and ballot initiatives, as well as other complex commercial litigation. In addition, Danny is an experienced bankruptcy litigator, having represented various debtors and creditors in fraudulent transfer cases and other contested insolvency-related matters involving U.S. and foreign law.

Danny is a member of the Second Circuit's pro bono panel and maintains an active pro bono practice focusing on criminal, immigration, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ rights matters in the Supreme Court and other appellate courts. He was recently recognized by the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association as a “Best LGBTQ+ Lawyer Under 40,” by the New York Law Journal as a Rising Star, and by LawDragon in its inaugural 500 X – The Next Generation listing. As part of his commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, Danny serves as a mentor for The Appellate Project, an organization focused on empowering law students of color to thrive in the appellate field. He has also served as an Orrick ambassador for the Move The Needle Fund, a collaborative effort designed by Diversity Lab to create a more diverse and inclusive legal profession.

Before joining Orrick, Danny served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Following his clerkships, he was selected to represent the American Inns of Court as a Temple Bar Scholar in London.

Posts by: Daniel Rubens

Second Circuit Affirms Enforceability of Flip Provisions in Swap Agreements Under Bankruptcy Code Safe Harbor

Daniel RubensPosted on September 2, 2020

For over a decade, Lehman Brothers Special Financing (“LBSF”) has been litigating the enforceability of so-called “flip clauses” in connection with the post-bankruptcy liquidation of swap agreements. These clauses, which are common in structured financing transactions, specify the priority of payments when a swap provider (like LBSF) is in default. In particular, these clauses purport to subordinate the swap provider’s payment priority below that of noteholders when termination payments are owed due to the provider’s default.

When LBSF’s holding company (Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.) filed a chapter 11 petition in September 2008, that filing placed LBSF in default under various swap agreements to which LBSF was a party. In a 2010 complaint involving 44 synthetic collateralized debt obligations (“CDOs”) that LBSF created, LBSF sought to claw back over $1 billion that had been distributed to noteholders in connection with the early termination of swap transactions, arguing that the flip clauses in those transactions were ipso facto provisions and therefore unenforceable. (Ipso facto clauses are contractual provisions that modify a debtor’s contractual rights solely because it petitioned for bankruptcy; the Bankruptcy Code generally treats such provisions as unenforceable.) The noteholders defended the distributions on various grounds, including by invoking the safe harbor codified in section 560 of the Bankruptcy Code, which exempts “swap agreements” from the Bankruptcy Code’s prohibition of ipso facto clauses.^[1] Read our key takeaways here.

Second Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Chapter 15 Appeal by Purported Shareholder on Standing Grounds

Evan Hollander, Daniel Rubens and Emmanuel FuaPosted on March 28, 2019

In a March 19, 2019 summary order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of a purported shareholder’s appeal challenging the chapter 15 recognition of a Cayman Islands restructuring of an offshore drilling contractor. See In re Ocean Rig UDW Inc., No. 18-1374, 2019 WL 1276205 (2d Cir. Mar. 19, 2019). The Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s dismissal of that appeal for lack of appellate standing. An Orrick team handled the chapter 15 proceedings in the bankruptcy court, as well as the appellate proceedings in the district court and Court of Appeals.

Background

The appeal was brought by a self-described shareholder of debtor Ocean Rig UDW Inc. (“UDW”). The appellant sought review of an order issued by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn granting recognition of provisional liquidation and scheme of arrangement proceedings in the Cayman Islands of UDW and three of its subsidiaries as “foreign main proceedings” under section 1517 of the Bankruptcy Code. That recognition order gave rise to various forms of relief, including an automatic stay with respect to the Debtors and their property within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

In the ancillary proceedings in the bankruptcy court, the appellant had opposed the Debtors’ petition for recognition on numerous grounds, including on the basis that venue was improper in the Southern District of New York, that the Debtors failed to meet their burden of proving that their center of main interests (“COMI”) was in the Cayman Islands, that the Debtors improperly manipulated their COMI, and that granting recognition would violate the public policy objectives of chapter 15. The bankruptcy court overruled those objections and granted recognition and other related relief under sections 1520 and 1521 of the Bankruptcy Code. See In re Ocean Rig UDW Inc., 570 B.R. 687 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2017).

Appellant timely noticed an appeal to the district court, but did not seek a stay of the recognition order. Thus, the Debtors moved forward with their restructuring via four interrelated schemes of arrangement under Cayman Islands law (the “Schemes”). The Schemes involved the exchange of more than $3.7 billion of existing financial indebtedness for $450 million in new secured debt, approximately $288 million in cash, and new equity in UDW. Under the Schemes, existing shareholders of UDW retained a nominal amount of equity in the reorganized UDW (0.02%), but this token amount was provided solely to facilitate UDW’s ability to maintain its NASDAQ listing and was not an indication of UDW’s solvency. In fact, the indicative value of the consideration distributed to the creditors under the Schemes was significantly less than the face amount of their claims.

Appellant did not object to the provisional liquidation proceedings or the Schemes, which were later sanctioned (i.e., approved) by the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands. Similarly, appellant did not object to a motion in the chapter 15 proceedings for entry of an order granting comity and giving full force and effect to the Schemes and Cayman court’s ruling in the United States, which the bankruptcy court subsequently granted. Promptly upon the bankruptcy court’s issuance of this “enforcement order,” the Debtors consummated the restructuring in accordance with the Schemes.

Thereafter, in the district court, before U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl, the Debtors and their authorized foreign representative moved to dismiss the appeal, arguing that the appellant’s purported shareholder status was insufficient to give her appellate standing, and that in any event, her appeal had been rendered equitably moot by the consummation of the restructuring. The district court granted the motion on both alternative grounds. See In re Ocean Rig UDW Inc., 585 B.R. 31 (S.D.N.Y. 2018).

Appellant then sought review of the district court’s dismissal in the Second Circuit. While that appeal was pending, a third-party company (Transocean Ltd.) acquired UDW in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $2.7 billion.

The Second Circuit’s Ruling

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the appeal for lack of standing. The Court of Appeals began its analysis by reiterating the settled legal standard for bankruptcy appellate standing: “To have standing to appeal from a bankruptcy court ruling in this Circuit, an appellant must be an ‘aggrieved person,’ a person directly and adversely affected pecuniarily by the challenged order of the bankruptcy court.” 2019 WL 1276205 at *1 (quoting In re Gucci, 126 F.3d 380, 388 (2d Cir. 1997)). “The stringency of our rule,” the Court explained, “is rooted in a concern that freely granting open‐ended appeals to those persons affected by bankruptcy court orders will sound the death knell of the orderly disposition of bankruptcy matters.” Id.

Applying that standard, the Second Circuit readily concluded that the appellant was not an “aggrieved person.” Although the appellant was subject to injunctions set forth in the bankruptcy court’s recognition order, she had not “pursued any action against UDW that has been stayed because of the injunctive relief, and her brief [did] not identify any action that she plans to pursue.” Id. Relatedly, the Second Circuit noted that the district court had found UDW was significantly insolvent at the time the Debtors initiated the Cayman proceedings, a finding which appellant had not challenged. Because Cayman Islands law provides that creditors must be made whole before shareholders can recover in a “winding up” proceeding, the Second Circuit concluded that shareholders, including appellant, lacked any pecuniary interest in those proceedings and the U.S. order recognizing those proceedings. Id. (citing Cayman Islands Companies Law § 140(1)).

The Second Circuit also treated as inapposite a prior chapter 15 decision invoked by appellant, Morning Mist Holdings Ltd. v. Krys (In re Fairfield Sentry Ltd.), 714 F.3d 127 (2d Cir. 2013). That decision arose from an appeal brought by shareholders of a feeder fund that invested in the Madoff fraud. The shareholders there challenged the bankruptcy court’s chapter 15 recognition of liquidation proceedings that were ongoing in the British Virgin Islands. But as the Second Circuit’s summary order here explained, standing was not at issue in that case, and the facts were distinguishable. The shareholders in Fairfield Sentry had filed a New York shareholder derivative suit that was stayed as a result of chapter 15 recognition, whereas here, the appellant could not identify any way that recognition caused her to be aggrieved.

The Second Circuit did not explicitly address the district court’s alternative basis for dismissal: i.e., that the consummation of the Debtors’ restructuring, combined with the appellant’s failure to seek a stay, rendered the appeal equitably moot. In re Ocean Rig UDW Inc., 585 B.R. at 39-41. Noting simply that it had considered the appellant’s remaining arguments and concluded that they were without merit, the Court of Appeals did not discuss the appellant’s contention that the equitable mootness doctrine is inapplicable to chapter 15 proceedings. The district court had previously rejected appellant’s arguments that equitable mootness did not apply under chapter 15, concluding that the same “principles of finality and fairness” that pertain to “domestic reorganizations” and the same “concerns of comity” that animated former section 304 of the Bankruptcy Code apply in the chapter 15 context. Id. at 41.

If you have any questions about any of the topics discussed in this opinion, please contact your Orrick attorney or any of the following attorneys:

Evan Hollander

Daniel Rubens

Orrick Wins S.D.N.Y. Dismissal of Chapter 15 Appeal by Purported Shareholder on Standing and Equitable Mootness Grounds

Evan Hollander, Emmanuel Fua and Daniel RubensPosted on April 16, 2018

In an April 6, 2018 memorandum opinion and order, U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl dismissed an appeal challenging the Chapter 15 recognition of a Cayman Islands restructuring of an offshore drilling contractor, holding that the appellant lacked standing and that the appeal was equitably moot. See In re Ocean Rig UDW Inc., No. 17-cv-7222 (JGK), 2018 WL 1725223 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 6, 2018).

The appeal was brought by a purported shareholder of debtor Ocean Rig UDW Inc. (“UDW”). The purported shareholder sought review of an order issued by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn granting recognition of provisional liquidation and scheme of arrangement proceedings in the Cayman Islands of UDW and three of its subsidiaries (Drill Rigs Holdings Inc. (“DRH”), Drillships Financing Holding Inc. (“DFH”), and Drillships Ocean Ventures Inc. (“DOV”), collectively the “Debtors”) as “foreign main proceedings” under section 1517 of the Bankruptcy Code.

In the ancillary proceedings in the Bankruptcy Court, the appellant had opposed the Debtors’ petition for recognition on numerous grounds, including on the basis that venue was improper in the Southern District of New York, that the Debtors failed to meet their burden of proving that their center of main interests (“CoMI”) was in the Cayman Islands, that the Debtors improperly manipulated their CoMI, and that granting recognition would violate the public policy objectives of Chapter 15. The Bankruptcy Court overruled the objections of the purported shareholder and granted recognition and other related relief under sections 1520 and 1521 of the Bankruptcy Code. See In re Ocean Rig UDW Inc., 570 B.R. 687 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2017).

Appellant noticed an appeal but did not seek a stay of the recognition order. Thus, the Debtors moved forward with their restructuring via four interrelated schemes of arrangement under Cayman Islands law (the “Schemes”). The Schemes involved the exchange of more than $3.7 billion of existing financial indebtedness for $450 million in new secured debt, approximately $288 million in cash payments, and new equity in UDW. Under the Schemes, existing shareholders of UDW retained a nominal amount of equity in the reorganized UDW (0.02%), but this token amount was provided solely to facilitate UDW’s ability to maintain its NASDAQ listing and was not an indication of UDW’s solvency; in fact, the indicative value of the consideration distributed to the scheme creditors was significantly less than the face amount of their claims.

Appellant did not object to the provisional liquidation proceedings or the Schemes, which were later sanctioned (i.e., approved) by the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands. Similarly, appellant did not object to the request in the Chapter 15 proceedings for entry of an enforcement order, and the Bankruptcy Court ultimately issued an order giving full force and effect to the Schemes in the United States. Promptly upon the Bankruptcy Court’s issuance of the enforcement order, the Debtors consummated the restructuring in accordance with the Schemes.

Meanwhile, in the District Court, the Debtors and their authorized foreign representative moved to dismiss the appeal, arguing that the appellant’s purported shareholder status was insufficient to give her appellate standing, and that in any event, her appeal had been rendered equitably moot by the consummation of the restructuring. The District Court granted the motion on both grounds.

Standing

As to standing, the District Court reiterated the two-pronged standard that the appellant in a bankruptcy case (1) must be an “aggrieved person” whose pecuniary interests are directly affected by the order at issue; and (2) must have “prudential standing,” in that he or she is asserting his or her “own legal rights and interests and not those of third parties.” Ocean Rig, 2018 WL 1725223, at *3. In discussing the latter prong, the District Court observed that “[p]rudential standing is particularly important in a bankruptcy context where one party may seek to challenge the plan based on the rights of third parties who favor the plan.” Id.

The District Court held that the appellant, a purported shareholder, was not an “aggrieved person” because she “did not stand to lose anything” from UDW’s restructuring. Id. The District Court reasoned that UDW was insolvent prior to initiating restructuring proceedings in the Cayman Islands, and that UDW’s Cayman Scheme had the effect of sending the “total value of UDW, represented by the new equity” to “UDW’s creditors pro rata, with no value left for its pre-restructuring shareholders.” Id. Thus, the appellant lacked the requisite pecuniary interest. Id.

Additionally, the District Court rejected the appellant’s argument that she had a pecuniary interest in the restructuring because UDW’s Scheme gave 0.02% of UDW’s newly issued equity to pre-restructuring shareholders. Id. at *4. Upon observing that UDW’s Scheme was constructed in that manner “in an effort to avoid having to re-register UDW’s shares on the NASDAQ, which would have ‘adversely affected’ the newly issued shares”—rather than because the pre-restructuring shareholders were actually entitled to the newly issued shares on account of their pre-restructuring holdings—the District Court held that the shares were merely “gifts” from UDW’s creditors. Id. The District Court then concluded that the nominal distribution of new equity to preexisting shareholders did not suggest that the Debtors were solvent, and did “not change the fact that the appellant was not entitled to receive anything as part of the debtors’ restructuring because the debtors’ creditors had not received the full portion of their claims.” Id.

The District Court further observed that while under the Second Circuit’s decision in In re DBSD N. Am., Inc., 634 F.3d 79, 95 (2d Cir. 2011), a dissenting class of unsecured creditors in a Chapter 11 case “may have standing to challenge such ‘gifts’ to shareholders,” appellant had provided no authority that the receipt of such a gift “provide[d] the recipient shareholders with standing to contest the restructuring.” Ocean Rig, 2018 WL 1725223, at *4.

Equitable Mootness

The District Court also held that dismissal was warranted on equitable mootness grounds, which it considered an independent and “additional reason” for dismissal. Id. Although the District Court recognized that the doctrine of equitable mootness originated in Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, it noted that the doctrine had since been imported and applied in cases under Chapters 7, 9, and 13, as well as in a case involving former Bankruptcy Code section 304, the predecessor statute to Chapter 15. Id. (citing, e.g., Allstate Ins. Co. v. Hughes, 174 B.R. 884 (S.D.N.Y. 1994) (Sotomayor, J.)). The District Court found “unpersuasive” appellant’s argument that equitable mootness cases under Chapter 11 former Bankruptcy Code section 304 have no force in the Chapter 15 context, reasoning that the same “principles of finality and fairness” that pertain to “domestic organizations” and the same “concerns of comity” that animated former section 304 apply in the chapter 15 context. Id. at *6.

The District Court thus applied Second Circuit’s established equitable mootness standard to this Chapter 15 appeal. Id. at *5. Under that standard, “when a reorganization has been substantially consummated, there is a ‘strong presumption’ that an appeal of an unstayed order is moot.” Id. (collecting cases). Such presumption may only be overcome if five circumstances are present:

(a) the court can still order some effective relief; (b) such relief will not affect the re-emergence of the debtor as a revitalized corporate entity; (c) such relief will not unravel intricate transactions so as to knock the props out from under the authorization for every transaction that has taken place and create an unmanageable, uncontrollable situation for the Bankruptcy Court; (d) the parties who would be adversely affected by the modification have notice of the appeal and an opportunity to participate in the proceedings; and (e) the appellant pursue with diligence all available remedies to obtain a stay of execution of the objectionable order . . . if the failure to do so creates a situation rendering it inequitable to reverse the orders appealed from.

Id. (quoting Frito-Lay, Inc. v. LTV Steel Co. (In re Chateaugay, Corp.), 10 F.3d 944, 952-53 (2d Cir. 1993)).

In setting forth the Chateaugay standard, the District Court emphasized the importance of the appellant seeking a stay of the order at issue, citing “fairness concerns” that arise from attempts to undo a reorganization that has already been substantially completed. Id.

In applying this standard, the District Court first observed that the appellant did not seek a stay of the Bankruptcy Court’s recognition order. Id. It then found that appellees had “argue[d] persuasively” that, on their restructuring effective date, their positions “comprehensively changed” and their “Cayman reorganization ha[d] been substantially completed.” Id. In particular, the District Court noted that the Debtors had “issued new equity and made cash distributions to creditors and entered into a new secured debt facility, as well as a long-term management services agreement.” Id. Given this change of circumstances, the District Court held there was a “strong presumption” that the appeal was moot on the ground that “the debtors’ reorganization has already been substantially completed.” Id. As the appellant failed to persuade the District Court that this “strong presumption” was overcome, the District Court dismissed her appeal as equitably moot. Id. at *6.

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