Race to courthouse to stop Detroit bankruptcy filing falls minutes short.Snyder’s legal team tricked
City of Detroit pensioners and their pension funds made a last-ditch effort to stop the city’s bankruptcy filing today, but were beaten to the courthouse by minutes.
An attorney for the pension funds said he feels blindsided because he agreed to delay the emergency hearing five minutes at the request of attorneys for Gov. Rick Snyder. He was seeking a temporary restraining order to block the historic bankruptcy filing.
During those five minutes, he said, attorneys filed in federal court in Detroit for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, which generally results in a stay in all other pending litigation involving the city.
And Ingham County Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said she would have issued a restraining order to stop the Detroit bankruptcy, if given a chance.
http://www.freep.com/article/20130718/NEWS06/307180130/
Detroit Becomes Largest City To Declare Bankruptcy
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/07/18/2326141/detroit-becomes-largest-city-to-declare-bankruptcy/
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Attorneys for the city’s pension fund say they would have won a restraining order blocking the bankruptcy filing temporarily – and preserving pensioner rights – but Gov. Snyder’s legal team tricked them. The Detroit Free Press reports pension fund lawyers agreed to the government’s request for a 5-minute delay to a hearing for the order, and that in that five minutes Snyder’s attorneys filed the bankruptcy papers in another court. “It was my intention to grant your request,” the judge told the pension lawyers.
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