Drayton statement via Mark Berman Twitter: Statement from Drayton McLane on Jim Crane lawsuit: "I haven't seen the lawsuit yet, but Jim Crane is highly experienced & has been in business over 30 years. He is surrounded by top-tier accountants, attorneys, operators & marketers and & he has participated in transactions even larger than this one. His experts meticulously examined the Houston Astros financial position. My team was absolutely transparent&produced thousands of pages of documents.We provided answers explanations to all of their questions. Any suggestion otherwise is absolutely false. As an example, today Jim Crane reportedly stated that he did not receive the business plan for CSN Houston prior to the purchase. That is not true. The accusations that have been reported are hollow & appear to be an attempt to recreate the facts."
This was also part of Drayton's comments. http://blog.chron.com/ultimateastros/2013/11/22/drayton-mclane-responds-to-crane-lawsuit/ This was one of the most complex and scrutinized transactions of my business career. Jim’s group had all the facts. In fact, he told the Chronicle this September that the regional sports network had ‘good long-term value.’ The Accusations that have been reported are hollow and appear to be an attempt to recreate the facts,. We will respond in a vigorous and persuasive manner to the lawsuit.”
While all this is true, I have seen adversaries filed in bk court that have a more tangential relationship to the bk issues than this. The problem is that, under Stern v. Marshall, the judge may not be able,to enter a final order since it isn't a core proceeding.
I agree. And if Crane has done this 2 or 3 times before, he'd know what questions to ask and whom to ask to get the answers that he needed.
You act as though all business transactions are the same. They aren't. I would imagine that the sale of a media company is about as different from most transactions as you can get. Also, if this type of thing never happened in business transactions. There wouldn't be an entire legal cause of action for fraud in the inducement. Did it happen here? I don't know. Is it out of the realm of possibility? Of course not, especially given the amount of proprietary information that Comcast redacted from its pleadings in the bankruptcy court
Came across this as I was looking at some information on Crane's previous attempts at purchasing a MLB team. Loves to sue people..... http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2010/10/11/daily2.html Mark Cuban and Jim Crane want payment of $2.65 million in legal fees and other expenses stemming from their failed bankruptcy bid for the Texas Rangers in August. In a motion filed late last month, the duo asked the Texas bankruptcy court to force Rangers Equity Holdings, the former parent company of the team, to pay Cuban $1.12 million and Crane $1.53 million. The money would come out of the proceeds paid by Rangers Equity to creditors. Cuban and Crane argue that had they not been bidding, the team would have brought $98 million less at auction than the $593 million price for which the club was ultimately sold. “Absent [our] efforts and contributions … the auction and the resulting peaceful resolution of these cases … likely would have been impossible,” the motion states. But Gary Eisenberg, a partner with Herrick Feinstein who specializes in bankruptcy matters, said he knew of no case in which a bankruptcy court awarded fees to a losing bidder when those fees had not been previously approved. “The precedent potentially is set [with a decision favoring Cuban and Crane] that everybody who loses in a bankruptcy auction gets compensated, which erodes recovery to the creditors, which is anathema to the bankruptcy court,” Eisenberg said. Cuban and Crane jointly bid for the team but lost to a group led by Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan.
It seems Jim Crane was involved in bidding on the Cubs which involved a 25% stake in Comcast Sports Chicago. I would say he had prior experience with an RSN with Comcast in the name..... I can look up his failed Rangers bid but I seem to recall the TV deal being put in place around the same time. http://bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5260:breaking-down-how-nine-of-mlbs-30-clubs-are-violation-of-debt-rules&catid=26:editorials&Itemid=39 Cubs – The last two you know, but the Cubs situation isn’t always on the radar. But, when the clubs was sold from Sam Zell and the Tribune Co. to the Ricketts family it was done as a “leveraged partnership”. The way the deal worked was the Ricketts borrowed money to buy the team, and the proceeds from the loans went to Tribune. The media company then retained a small stake in the partnership, less than 5 percent, giving it some exposure to the loans – a tax dodge for Zell and Tribune. Thus, MLB knew about the debt structure for the sale before it occurred. The sale, which totaled 845 included Wrigley Field and a 25 percent stake in Comcast SportsNet Chicago.
Stop commenting on bankruptcy matters. You have no idea what you are talking about. He didn't file a lawsuit in the Rangers case. He participated in an auction in an EXISTING bankruptcy case. Crane and Cuban (an unrelated third party bidder) both lost in the auction and filed a motion in the EXISTING case to have their attorney fees reimbursed by THE BANKRUPTCY ESTATE. Their legal theory is that their aggressive bids significantly increased the sale price and thus created a benefit to the estate and enhanced recovery for the creditors. Benefit to the estate is one of the factors to be considered for an award of attorney fees under Rule 2016. It is unusual for a non-creditor to request fees, but not completely unheard of. Without reading the pleadings, I am not sure, but my guess is that it wasn't even a motion. It was likely a 2016 application. In either event, he certainly did not sue anybody in regard to the Rangers. He filed to recover fees in a bankruptcy case. Requests for fee reimbursement in bankruptcy cases is routine. I do it every day on behalf of my creditor clients.
Very different situation in that the revenue streams for the Chicago station were definite. Contracts were already in place and had been for some time. All he had to go on in the Houston deal were the projections and figures compiled by Comcast. You know...the partner entity with all the experience and contacts in the cable industry.
Whoop de do. It wasnt technically a lawsuit. It was a jackass move nonetheless that a legal expert in the case said was unprecedented. And I will comment on any subject I please.
But Crane had an idea what the rates were in both the Rangers and Cubs situation and could compare them to what the projections from the Astros deal were. As has also been stated, it is highly unlikely the MFN clause was not in contractual documents. It would be impossible for Comcast to lower their rates if the contractual language didn't exist and wasn't executed. Are you certain that there was no MFN language in the Cubs contract? The reference in the other post was to point out that Crane had gone before a court with BS before. Everything is someone else's fault with that guy.
He never said that it was unprecedented. He said he did not know of any cases where it had been approved. That is a big difference. 2016 applications get filed all the time. I followed the Rangers auction at the time it happened. Judge Nelms was not happy with how that auction went down. The conduct of Cuban and Ryan during that auction was horrible, constantly complaining about the process. That auction finally finished around 1:30 in the morning. Given the contentious manner in which the auction was conducted, a request for fees thereafter isn't surprising. As for things being unprecedented, every case in the Bankruptcy Reporter involves the resolution of previously unprecedented pleadings by the bankruptcy court or appellate courts. That's how law is made in this country. After the 2005 Code amendments, I did it twice. You state that Crane is litigious, however for a guy that has been involved in business at a high level for many years, you can come up with one lawsuit and one administrative application for fees. That isn't exactly a very litigious guy. By all means, keep posting on whatever you want. I can always use the chuckle when you completely misstate basic bankruptcy law.
Go away.... if all you can do is nitpick. If something sets a precedent then it means that situation hasn't happened before and the demands being awarded without prior approval were unprecedented. My point was that Crane isn't above going in front of a court with a preposterous argument. I could fire back personal comments about your understanding of contractual negotiations too but we've been asked not to as to not to derail the thread. Jim Crane is open season, other posters are not.
If you want to ignore my references to the Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure and the case law construing them in favor of your blind hatred of Jim Crane, by all means, do not let me stop you. Bringing up the relevant law in response to a point that YOU brought up isn't nitpicking. It is poking a hole in your argument. If you can't handle that, just say so.
I can handle you just fine. You understood what my point was even if I didn't phrase it correctly. Bottomline it was unprecedented for anyone to be rewarded in a situation like Cuban and Crane (God help anyone who has to deal with that pair) were asking. It was a bull**** demand for an unprecedented award that ultimately would cost creditors in the bankruptcy court money. If we all had to bow down to the "experts" around here then the only benefit is those of us let the experts form our opinons wouldn't have been wrong when the judge didn't throw the case out immediately like most of you were claiming.
If you go back and read the other thread, I said many times that I wasn't sure the judge would throw out the bankruptcy case. I said the judge may do something nobody expected. That is exactly what happened. You can put experts in quotes all you want. It doesn't reduce the amount I know about bamkruptcy law. The only thing it does is make you look like a complete douchebag.
