decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more... 		decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.

You won't find me on Facebook

Donate

Donate Paypal

No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.

What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments

Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
More Lawyer/Accountant Bills for SCO - Updated with the Doomsday Clock
Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 03:35 AM EST

More bills from lawyers and accountants in the SCO bankruptcy are on the docket. Is anyone keeping a running tab? Wouldn't that be a good idea now that Novell has mentioned SCO has spent over a million dollars already in the bankruptcy on lawyers and financial advisors? If so, send it to me, and we'll have a kind of SCO tally. You know, like a Doomsday Clock.

Here are the filings:
307 - Filed & Entered: 01/14/2008
Application for Compensation
Docket Text: Monthly Application for Compensation (Third) and Reimbursement of Expenses, as Co-Counsel to the Debtors and Debtors in Possession, for the Period from November 1, 2007 through November 30, 2007 Filed by Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones LLP. Objections due by 2/4/2008. (Attachments: # (1) Notice # (2) Exhibit A# (3) Certificate of Service and Service List) (Werkheiser, Rachel)

308 - Filed & Entered: 01/14/2008
Certificate of No Objection
Docket Text: Certificate of No Objection (No Order Required) Regarding First Interim Application of Tanner LC for Compensation for Services and Reimbursement of Expenses as Accountants to the Debtors for the Period from October 5, 2007 through November 5, 2007 (related document(s)[285] ) Filed by The SCO Group, Inc.. (Attachments: # (1) Certificate of Service and Service List) (Werkheiser, Rachel)

309 - Filed & Entered: 01/14/2008
Certificate of No Objection
Docket Text: Certificate of No Objection (No Order Required) Regarding Second Interim Application of Tanner LC for Compensation for Services and Reimbursement of Expenses as Accountants to the Debtors for the Period from November 6, 2007 through December 5, 2007 (related document(s)[286] ) Filed by The SCO Group, Inc.. (Attachments: # (1) Certificate of Service and Service List) (Werkheiser, Rachel)

310 - Filed & Entered: 01/14/2008
Affidavit/Declaration of Service
Docket Text: Affidavit/Declaration of Service of Notice of Filing of Fee Application and the Second Interim Application of Dorsey & Whitney LLP, Special Counsel to the Debtors and Debtors-In-Possession, for Compensation and Reimbursement of Expenses for the Period November 1, 2007 Through November 30, 2007 (related document(s)[305] ) Filed by Dorsey & Whitney LLP. (Schnabel, Eric)

Update: OK. Here's our first version of the SCO Doomsday Clock, showing how much SCO has been billed since the start of the bankruptcy in mid-September. Mesirow reduced what it would take immediately, but not what it is ultimately billing, so we left the original figure intact. If you have corrections or additions, please let me know, but this is accurate, we think:

Docket #FirmFeesExpensesTotal
163Berger Singerman$65,331.00$2,526.40$67,857.40
224Berger Singerman$175,516.00$5,177.33$180,693.33
238Dorsey & Whitney$57,585.75$6,139.29$63,725.04
274Pachulski$29,983.00$5,696.82$35,679.82
280Mesirow$449,888.30$48,702.11$498,590.41
285Tanner$28,499.00$450.00$28,949.00
286Tanner$19,001.00$1,534.00$20,535.00
287Berger Singerman$296,323.25$13,072.33$309,395.58
295Pachulski$66,340.00$7,833.30$74,173.30
300Tanner$65,955.00$1,523.00$67,478.00
305Dorsey & Whitney$26,456.50$527.93$26,984.43
307Pachulski$50,118.00$6,577.01$56,695.01
___ Total$1,330,996.80$99,759.52$1,430,756.32

Boies Schiller have been paid millions since day one of the SCO saga up to the bankruptcy and are also a creditor, but this is a chart of the bankruptcy figures only.

I'm thinking to make it a real Doomsday Clock we should add the amount that SCO started with in the way of assets, cash assets, and then show it going down.

Update 2: Here's a fascinating look at the state of Delaware, the capital of the bankruptcy universe in the US, where bankruptcies are a booming business:

For the year, Chapter 11 activity rose 23 percent to 220 filings from 179 filings in 2006, according to data provided by the court. ...Bird said the filing activity has continued into the first two weeks of 2008 and the court is bracing for an active year.

"We are very busy," said Laura Davis Jones, managing partner of Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones in Wilmington, a national firm specializing in bankruptcy.

For a state as small as Delaware, the return of the bankruptcy business has enormous economic consequences. It has been estimated that cases in Bankruptcy Court generate more than $50 million annually to the local economy, which includes money spent on hotels, caterers, document services and fees to Wilmington lawyers.

The bankruptcy bar in Delaware includes about 200 lawyers. Big cases can generate huge fees to lawyers and consultants. Legal scholars said fees to firms can range from 0.5 percent to 20 percent of the company's assets, depending on the size of the company.

But what is really interesting is that the article explains that most companies choose Delaware because it is so fast:

The court in Delaware created the quickie bankruptcy proceeding known as the "pre-packaged" case. A company using a pre-packaged bankruptcy could have its reorganization plans confirmed at a median rate of 57 days from 1999 to 2001, according to LoPucki. Procedures developed in the Delaware courts streamlined and standardized rules for the most complex cases, bankruptcy experts said.

As a result, by 1996, the state's share of bankruptcy filings by large public companies had risen to 87 percent of large public company filings nationwide, according to LoPucki.

After that, it goes on, New York took over the lead for a while, because Delaware became a victim of its own success, and so many cases went there, they didn't have enough judges, so it slowed down and with visiting judges helping out, it all got chaotic. Then they put more judges on the bench, and now Delaware ranks number one again.

So. 57 days. Normal is to try to go fast through to reorganization. Here we are at 3 1/2 months in the SCO Chapter 11, and nothing. Well. Lotsa fees. And we have not yet seen the bills from Jackson Hole Advisors, or the UK firm, Elkington & Fife handling the UK trademark issue, or the firm advising SCO on employee claims [PDF], Landman Corsi, or the PR firm ramped up to handle the bankruptcy, or the Indian law firm, Thakker & Thakker, or the law firm, Madson & Austin, that says it advises SCO on intellectual property matters, or the Korean firm, Kim & Cho, handling some kind of trademark thing. All of these professionals are working away on SCO's behalf, presumably, since they all filed applications to do so. Wait, I almost forgot the firm of Donohue & Associates, who advised SCO about the Nasdaq matter. And then there is the money for the German litigation. But even without their bills, the figure is already nearly a million and a half since September 14.


  


More Lawyer/Accountant Bills for SCO - Updated with the Doomsday Clock | 278 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Off Topic here
Authored by: kinrite on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 04:03 AM EST
Clickable links please.

---
"Truth is like energy...it can not be created, nor destroyed"

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections here
Authored by: Erwan on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 04:05 AM EST
If any

---
Erwan

[ Reply to This | # ]

[NP] Groklaw News Picks discussion
Authored by: Aladdin Sane on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 04:32 AM EST
Discuss Groklaw News Picks here.

Please let us know which News Pick you are commenting on.

---
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.
  ―IETF RFC 1925

[ Reply to This | # ]

Totals for the 3 filings + 1 with no amount?
Authored by: itsnotme on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 04:48 AM EST
The totals for the first three come out to $86655.41. So that's approximately
another 100k gone from the estate. The last filing for Dorsey (310) oddly
didn't have the amounts or anything other than saying they were filing for
payment.

At the rate the bills are coming in, I wonder if the judge is going to have
writers block with all the signing he's going to be doing.

[ Reply to This | # ]

More Lawyer/Accountant Bills for SCO
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 06:22 AM EST
How about sending that tab and our calculations
to Darl and tSCOG ? Maybe he just dosent know how much this
is all costing him .. Or that someone notices ..

:D

Ric

[ Reply to This | # ]

Time for chapter 7
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 07:36 AM EST
SCO continues to simply bleed away all assets to lawyers and advisors without filing any meaningful plan for reorganization (which is the purpose of chapter 11). It would seem that by now the judge should be able to see through this nonsense and the need to stop this bleeding and simply convert to chapter 7.

This company clearly is going nowhere, and has no reasonable plan for how to recover from its present disastrous state. It's the court's and trustee's responsibility to see that value owed to creditors and shareholders is protected, not washed away.

J

[ Reply to This | # ]

More Lawyer/Accountant Bills for SCO
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 08:53 AM EST
Wot? No html table tags ;-)

Docket__Firm____Fees____________Expenses________Total
163_____BS______$65,331.00______$2,526.40_______$67,857.40
224_____BS______$175,516.00_____$5,177.33_______$180,693.33
238_____DW______$57,585.75______$6,139.29_______$63,725.04
274_____PSZL____$29,983.00______$5,696.82_______$35,679.82
280_____Mesirow_$499,883.00_____$48,701.22______$548,584.22
285_____Tanner__$28,499.00______$450.00_________$28,949.00
286_____Tanner__$19,001.00______$1,534.00_______$20,535.00
287_____BS______$296,323.25_____$1,072.33_______$297,395.58
295_____PSZL____$66,340.00______$7,833.30_______$74,173.30
300_____Tanner__$65,955.00______$1,523.00_______$67,478.00
305_____DW______$26,456.50______$527.93_________$26,984.43
307_____PSZL____$50,118.00______$6,577.01_______$56,695.01
________Total___$1,380,991.50___$87,758.63______$1,468,750.13

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cattleback-- attorney call from old firm
Authored by: stats_for_all on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 11:02 AM EST
A call to a new law firm is detailed on Page 5, Attachment A of the new bill, 307ExA.

11/28/07
JEO
Call from Dan DeFranceschi regarding Cattleback Motion.
[Time] 0.20
[Rate] 475.00
[Billing] $95.00
The attorney works for Richards, Layton & Finger, who was SCO's lawfirm in the initial stages of the Red Hat case, but was dropped in October, 2003.

Daniel J. DeFranceschi is a senior attorney at the Delaware bankruptcy practice of "Richards, Layton & Finger". This may indicate the mysterious purchaser of the patent operating under the recently coined "BlackMaple, LLC" moniker is a well heeled corporate entity, or BlackMaple has ties to SCO circa 2003.

Mr. DeFranceschi's bio from his firms site below:

Daniel J. DeFranceschi

Experience
Daniel J. DeFranceschi is a director in the firm's Restructuring and Bankruptcy Group. His practice focuses on representing debtors and creditors in Chapter 11 cases. He has represented clients in all aspects of Chapter 11 cases.

Mr. DeFranceschi has served as counsel to numerous Chapter 11 debtors in several business segments including telecommunications, high tech, retail, manufacturing, natural resources, flexible office solutions, and healthcare. Representative clients include: Nextel International; Montgomery Ward; USG Corporation; Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation; Slater Steel; Oglebay Norton Company; Burlington Industries; HQ Global; Liberate Technologies and PHP Healthcare.

Mr. DeFranceschi also has an active creditor practice, with recent representations including numerous creditors in some of the largest Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 cases in the country.

Mr. DeFranceschi is actively involved in the American Bankruptcy Institute and the Turnaround Management Association, and is a Bencher in the Delaware Bankruptcy Inn of Court.

Mr. DeFranceschi is a member of the State Bar of Delaware, 1989 United States District Court, District of Delaware; Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Education
JD, Widener University School of Law, 1989 magna cum laude

BS, Pennsylvania State University, 1985


Source: Attorney directory on RLF.com page

Richards, Layton & Finger, a Delaware professional association, is Delaware's largest law firm and one of its oldest. The firm provides a wide range of legal services for the benefit of its clients in Delaware and beyond. Richards, Layton & Finger is located in Wilmington – Delaware's business and financial center located midway between New York City and Washington, DC.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Table formatting
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 12:49 PM EST
Is it possible to format the table cells so that the amounts are right-aligned?

[ Reply to This | # ]

More Lawyer/Accountant Bills for SCO - Updated with the Doomsday Clock
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 01:15 PM EST
But don't we also have to balance this against the companies earnings to get a
true picture of when they'll go belly up?

[ Reply to This | # ]

To make the doomsday clock look better you'll want the figures right-justified in their colums
Authored by: electron on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 01:17 PM EST
To make the doomsday clock look better you'll want the figures right-justified
in their colums.

A little bit of CSS for the table should fix that. :o)


---
Electron

"A life? Sounds great! Do you know where I could download one?"

[ Reply to This | # ]

Correction on the Table of Legal Fees
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 01:22 PM EST
One correction for the table created in the parent post -- Docket # 287 is a
bill for services from Berger-Singerman, not Boies-Schiller.

[ Reply to This | # ]

I've said it before...
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 01:28 PM EST
...SCO lost in Utah and that essentially was game, set and match for SCO. This
to me, was the "Red Dress" day. While it would be nice to see Novell
get some of their money back, this will probably not happen. SCO will run out of
money shortly before the bench trial if the bankruptcy judge does not intercede.
The only issue left will be if Novell is interested in trying to get some of the
money back from the various law firms that are currently bleeding SCO dry. In
the end it looks like none of the senior SCO management are going to be held
accountable for their actions.

What I don't understand is why Novell signed an interoperability agreement with
Microsoft when Microsoft funded the SCO/Novell lawsuits with the license
purchase?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Doomsday clock?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 01:31 PM EST
I dunno what figure you'd use for the start of the clock, so I looked at the
last 10Q. Here's what I've got:

SCO Assets as of Q3 2007 10Q = 15,794,000
163___Boies Schiller___________15,726,143
224___Boies Schiller___________15,545,449
238___Dorsey & Whitney_________15,481,724
274___Pachulski________________15,446,044
280___Mesirow__________________14,897,460
285___Tanner___________________14,868,511
286___Tanner___________________14,847,976
287___Boies Schiller___________14,550,581
295___Pachulski________________14,476,407
300___Tanner___________________14,408,929
305___Dorsey & Whitney_________14,381,945
307___Pachulski________________14,325,250

[ Reply to This | # ]

Updated with the Doomsday Clock
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 03:34 PM EST

May I suggest a different layout and sort order:

Docket#...Firm.............Fees........Expenses.... Total...... Subtotals
163.......Boies Schiller...$65,331.00..$2,526.40. ..$67,857.40
224.......Boies Schiller..$175,516.00..$5,177.33. .$180,693.33
287.......Boies Schiller..$296,323.25..$1,072.33. .$297,395.58. $545,946.31
238.......Dorsey & Whitney.$57,585.75..$6,139.29. ..$63,725.04
305.......Dorsey & Whitney.$26,456.50....$527.93. ..$26,984.43.. $90,709.47
280.......Mesirow.........$499,883.00.$48,701.22. .$548,584.22. $548,584.22
285.......Tanner...........$28,499.00....$450.00. ..$28,949.00
286.......Tanner...........$19,001.00..$1,534.00. ..$20,535.00
300.......Tanner...........$65,955.00..$1,523.00. ..$67,478.00. $116,962.00
274.......Pachulski........$29,983.00..$5,696.82. ..$35,679.82
295.......Pachulski........$66,340.00..$7,833.30. ..$74,173.30
307.......Pachulski........$50,118.00..$6,577.01. ..$56,695.01. $166,548.13
___.......Total.........$1,380,991.50.$87,758.63 $1,468,750.13

Note: It is very hard to do tables here. Can't you at least get the <pre> tag implemented?

[ Reply to This | # ]

who says debt isn't a viable business?
Authored by: skip on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 05:16 PM EST
Sounds daft I know, but it appears to me that debt has become the new means to
generate wealth.

Have you folk in America heard of the Northern Rock Bank crisis here in the UK?

It hinges on the bank having invested in (what turned out to be unstable) debt.
This is normal practice. Having customers in credit is of no interest to banks,
they like customers with debt. It went sour for them, but only because they
hadn't been in the business long enough to generate a decent amount of reserve
cash. Had it not been for the unsecured mortgage crisis, they would have reeled
in buckets of cash.

From what I understand there is a huge trade in debt sales, selling blocks of
customers in debt makes lots of cash.

As a more personal observation, I had a very odd conversation with a bank cold
caller a few weeks back.
To start with they asked me if I would like to transfer my existing debt to one
of their credit cards. I explained that not only do I have no such debt, I have
no credit cards.
On hearing this, the salesperson then tried to sell me some debt, to whit, a
card with x thousands limit.
This struck me as crazytalk, and I said as much.

It seems to me that banks don't like people who manage their money without debt,
so perhaps a business with debt is equally attractive. after all, the fact that
debt can be sold is well established by now.

With that in mind I wouldn't be surprised if SCO is shifted into this weird (and
yet apparently well established) debt as profit realm, and kept in business.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO is leading the average in bankruptcy legal fees
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 08:12 PM EST
If there were 179 bankruptcy cases filed in 2006, and the total brought into the
local economy was $50 million, assuming that the lion's share went to the
lawyers, that works out to an average of less than a third of a million dollars
per case in legal fees. SCO is well beyond that already, and they aren't even to
the point of developing a reorganization plan. Nor are they a very large
company, relatively speaking.

SCO's total assets at the beginning of the bankruptcy proceedings was around $9
million, so their money spent on lawyers so far is over 10% of their total
assets. If this goes on much longer, they may set a new record, as they seem to
be on pace to go well beyond 20% of their initial total assets in legal fees.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Original Sco Clock
Authored by: studog on Tuesday, January 15 2008 @ 09:45 PM EST

Sadly it's only available at the Wayback Machine now:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.scocountdown.com

The pages after Apr 1, 2004 are GoDaddy ads.

The domain doesn't resolve via Opera so it's likely available. Please DON'T use a whois search to check!** If you're going to register it, just do it. If it's taken you'll be denied.

...Stu

**Some less scrupulous registrars are auto-registering every whois query and then reselling them.

[ Reply to This | # ]

It all begs a new word - SCOpulence
Authored by: kawabago on Wednesday, January 16 2008 @ 01:46 AM EST
Scopulence - Throwing money in all directions except where it's supposed to go.

[ Reply to This | # ]

More Lawyer/Accountant Bills for SCO - Updated with the Doomsday Clock
Authored by: philc on Wednesday, January 16 2008 @ 12:55 PM EST
The doomsday calculator also has to include SCO's revenue. The costs from these
filings are partially offset by revenue. The rate of depletion of SCO's check
book is likely not as sever as these filings would suggest.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details ) 		Site layout based on Woodlands theme by Bryan Bell.
Groklaw logo by John Crowley.
News Picks logo by Ted Thompson.
Powered By GeekLog
Created this page in 0.05 seconds