HEIRESS DOESN’T WANT HER FINANCES SCRUTINIZED
By NAOMI KLOUDA ALASKA
JOURNAL OF COMMERCE
A Washington, D.C., attorney hired by Alice Rogoff in her Alaska Dispatch News bankruptcy case is arguing against subjecting Rogoff’s finances to deeper scrutiny until more specifics are spelled out.
Attorney James Lister of Birch Horton Bittner & Cherot’s Washington D.C. office argues in a Nov. 28 filing that Rogoff, the former owner of the ADN, wasn’t given ample time to produce financial documents, as requested, by Dec. 6. He also argues that bankruptcy laws allow his client to be told which people are to be witnesses. And, in a third point of the motion, seeks for Rogoff to be “more properly noticed including stating the due date for any objections.”
Nacole Jipping, the public trustee in the liquidation portion of the bankruptcy, has asked the court to allow her attorney William Artus to hire additional counsel from a specialty firm, Bush Kornfeld LLP in Seattle. A flurry of back-and-forth filings in November by Rogoff’s bankruptcy attorney Cabot Christianson argued against hiring the firm. The Bush Korfeld law firm could eat up proceeds that should go to the biggest creditor: Rogoff herself, he argued.
A hearing was to be held on Nov. 27 for the judge to rule on those arguments. But that hearing was postponed to Dec. 15. Bush Kornfeld LLC was to be hired on a contingency fee.
At the heart of the new arguments is the question of whose financial documents are being examined in what’s known as a 2004 examination: Rogoff as an individual or the “debtor,” the separate entity Alaska Dispatch LLC.
A 2004 examination provides a broader, more formal process to look in detail at debts accrued leading up to the bankruptcy. Creditors can use the exam to find property that wasn’t listed as part of the bankruptcy estate. It could look at bills racked up just prior to filing bankruptcy, according federal bankruptcy rules.
[Read more at Alaska Journal of Commerce]
