Landlord Issues
St. James has published extensively on bankruptcy and insolvency issues affecting landlords. He has addressed issues regarding the choice of a cash security deposit or letters of credit in a number of articles.

In Throwing Tenants Off Spanish Peaks, St. James analyzed two authoritative decisions which make it possible to sell leased commercial property free and clear of the rights of a tenant in possession.  Within the following year, St. James applied that authority to sell a gas station free of the rights of a tenant with an operating lease, increasing its sale value from $3 million to $8 million.

In “Landlord Beware”, St. James argued that unless the protections of certain California Civil Code sections governing security deposits were waived in the lease, a landlord might be unable to apply the security deposit against “prospective damages”: losses a landlord will inevitably suffer after the lease is prematurely terminated. That analysis was approved and adopted by a California Court of Appeals in 250 LLC v. PhotoPoint, which favorably cited St. James’ article.

In “Slicing And Dicing Executory Contracts” St. James presents a coherent analytical structure for evaluating when a single contract should be divided into multiple contracts, each of which may be separately assumed or rejected, and when multiple contracts should be aggregated into a single contract, all of which must be assumed or rejected together.

In “Leasing to a Financially Weak Tenant”, St. James provides practical advice about issues a landlord should consider when leasing to such a tenant and dealing with a tenant insolvency.

“What’s A Landlord to Do? Choosing between Security Deposits and Letters of Credit Based on Tenant Insolvency Concerns” is a practical discussion of the criteria for choosing between a cash security deposit and a letter of credit.

St. James asserted, in “Oldden, Letters of Credit and Section 502(b)(6)” that letters of credit should not be applied to reduce the “Landlord’s Cap.” He unsuccessfully argued that position on behalf of the Landlord in In re AB Liquidating Corp., but the Ninth Circuit rejected that analysis. In “Are Letters of Credit Covered by the Landlord’s Cap?”, St. James canvasses the current state of the law on the subject across the country.

Federal Tax Liens
In “A Lien Like No Other: Federal Tax Liens Before and After Bankruptcy,”  St. James explains the unusual aspects of a federal tax liens, including the prospect that a tax lien will leapfrog over “regular” existing liens under some circumstances.

Bankruptcy for Too Big To Fail Companies
Prior to the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies, St. James and Professor George Kuney authored a proposal for an alternative to Chapter 11 to reorganize Too Big to Fail companies.

Venue Shopping
In “Why Bad Things Happen in Large Chapter 11 Cases: Some Thoughts About Courting Failure”, St. James discusses the common practice of filing large bankruptcy cases in Manhattan and Delaware and the motivations and policies implicated by venue shopping.

Copies of all articles are available upon request.