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Hello, today is March 31st, 2025. My name's Pauline Morgan. I'm senior counsel at Young Conaway Stargatt and Taylor, and I am here at the bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware with Judge Mary Walrath, who has been serving as one of our distinguished bankruptcy judges since 1998,

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September of 1998, and I'm delighted to be doing this today. I'm interviewing Judge Walrath as part of the oral history program of the National Bankruptcy Archives. So with that I think we can get started Judge Wrath please start at the beginning. Tell me about your childhood

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where you grew up and how your family life was. OK, well thanks for doing this, Pauline. My pleasure. I know it's a chore, not at all. I grew up in a small town in north central Pennsylvania. It really was idyllic, uh, picture Andy Griffith,

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and I had a large family. There were 7 kids born within 8 years of each other, and my father was a lawyer. My mother had been an actress in Atlantic City growing up, and, my father was a lawyer in Philadelphia and just

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decided that he wanted to move to a small town in Pennsylvania, so they up and moved. And what's the name of the town? Wellsboro, Pennsylvania and they raised us because it was just a wonderful place to live. It was safe. There were a

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lot of kids in, you know, in the neighborhood. There were only 3000 people in town. Having such a large family helped me because you always, even when you were fighting or, you know, annoyed at one, sibling, you could always find another sibling to

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go to the movies with or to hang out with and we were very, very close. Where were you in the pecking order? I was 3rd of 7. There were 3 girls, a boy, and then 3, younger girls, but again, all within the space of 8

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years, so. Sounds chaotic. Exactly. My brother and I are Irish twins born 10 months apart, so, yeah, and we just had a great time. We were. Played in played outside in the yard all the time we had adventures that we probably

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don't want to tell our parents about, but. So it was just wonderful. Sorry, you said your father, decided to move from Philadelphia. Did you have other family in Wellsboro or he just picked Wellsboro as a nice place to raise a family? They would

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go out on the weekends from Philadelphia and drive around the state and drove into Wellsboro and decided it was perfect and they were right. It is, it's a wonderful town and how far is that from Philly? It's about 5 hours. Oh well, yeah, yeah. And,

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and as I say, it was just a wonderful growing up. I, my family is very important to me. My father was great my mother was great, my siblings are great we always had each other's back and we still do today. That's fantastic.

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I'll tell you something from. When COVID hit, we started doing a family Zoom every week, and we are still doing it because we enjoy talking to each other so much just the siblings or extended family too, mostly the siblings, even though 5 of the 7

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now live in Wellsboro, 2 next to each other. Oh, I didn't know that so. Yeah, two of your sisters lived next to each other? No, my sister and my brother, Tracy and Tommy. So, but you know they, they always had my back throughout the years and

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they know I have theirs, so it's just a really good sense of family. When my parents passed away early, I became an orphan at 35, it was tough, but we all even got closer than we had been, so. Now, full disclosure, I, I did

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work with you in the past, so I know a little bit about your history, but I don't remember a lot of it, but I know you had a nickname and I know the first three girls, all the nicknames rhymed, right? They did. Pris, Chris, and I

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was Miss. OK, Prissy, Chrissy and Missy is what I remember. Yes, so you were Missy Walrath for a long time for forever and in fact. When I, got married, to my husband Ed, whom you also know, my nieces pulled me aside and said,

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doesn't he know your name is Missy? Why is he calling you Mary? So they didn't even know my name was Mary. Your nieces and nephews call you Aunt Missy and not Aunt Mary. Correct, that's, that's great. That's great, um. So go ahead your dad

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was a lawyer. What kind of, what kind of work did he do? He did everything he was a small town lawyer, and he, he practiced everything he was very theatrical and outspoken and everybody in town knew him and loved him and I'm a little the

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opposite. I was a bookworm, never thought that I could be a lawyer because I was not at all like him. And he also told tall tales to the family. He was always making up stories and of course when we were young we didn't realize

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this. We would be walking down the street in Wellsboro and he had always told us he was the king of Wellsboro and we were like, no you aren't come on and he'd stop, excuse me, stranger. My, my, my family doesn't believe that I am the king

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of Wellsboro. Oh yes, he is, they would say. So he had us going for a while until he realized the people he was talking to. He knew very well and they were in they were in on the joke, so. But he had to be

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one of the more prominent people in town as the was it was it maybe one of only a couple law firms, right? that's right, he was on his own. There were maybe a dozen lawyers in town and it was a county seat, so

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all the lawyers were of the county were in town, but yeah, he was very flamboyant. So you said you were not, you were a bookworm and you never thought you'd be a lawyer. What did you think you were going to do? Did you have any

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ideas when you were younger? Initially I wanted to be a mathematician. I really loved math, the logic of it, and I could follow until I got to college and, hit a brick wall with some of the theoretical math they were teaching. So, but, that's

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that's what I thought. I thought I'd be a mathematician, math teacher. Interesting. And so, and I might be skipping ahead, but when you went to Princeton, even you didn't think you were going to law school, you thought you were gonna be studying math. Yeah. I,

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yeah, I spent two years at Princeton until the professor called me in and said, you know, you're flunking this class, and I see you're in the math department, so I think you need to find another department. So I did. I went to American history. So I

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jumped ahead, tell, tell, tell me about the process of, you know, going away from Wellsboro to go to, I guess you had a couple siblings ahead of you that already went to college, right? Yes, and they went to Immaculata, my two older sisters, yes, because, as

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my father told us he used to try and date girls from Immaculata, and they would not, you know have anything to do with him so he thought it was safe to send his daughters to Immaculata. But I got good grades. I was

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really as I say a bookworm and I also played basketball in high school in high school, so. He thought maybe, and I, and I did. I had options to go to other schools, including most of the Ivy Leagues, so he encouraged me in that,

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in fact, when I started getting all A's, he, Princeton was considering admitting women. So he told me about this. So I wrote a letter in ninth grade trying to convince them that they ought to let women into Princeton because I would be graduating in 1972, and

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I hoped that I would be able to go. That's amazing. Did you get an answer? No. That's rude. That's what I thought as a young girl from a small town. I thought it was very rude, but it was. Any trepidations about leaving? I

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mean, I assume you had a pretty sheltered life although you had family in Philadelphia still or that area not in Philadelphia but in Atlantic City, but frankly, I couldn't wait to get out of town. It was. Very small town and it was hard to talk to

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people about really any ideas we had at our dinner table we always had a lively discussion about you know current events about interesting books we had read about my mother was very theatrical any movie we had seen or yeah show we had seen, and they were

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very cosmopolitan compared to Wellsboro. And I just did not find any intellectual challenge in town, so I really could not wait to leave town. It sounds terrible, but no, it, it sounds normal to me, and you, said you had a lot of choices and

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why did you choose Princeton? We went on the college tour and actually the first school we went to was Princeton and I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it and walked around campus. I spent a night there in somebody's

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dorm and by then women had been admitted and I just I fell in love with it. I also because I played basketball in high school I really wanted to play basketball and I went down and met some women who were who had formed a

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non varsity team, but they were trying to convince the university to make it a varsity sport. So for women, so, the camera doesn't show this, but. How tall are you now and how tall were you then? I am still 5'2. Excellent. But that's not

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very tall for a basketball player. No, no, I was a point guard obviously, but yeah, I enjoyed it again it was playing with my siblings. We were always playing games outside. My mother, my mother would open the door at 10 o'clock in the morning

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on a Saturday and say, get out, don't come back till 5. So we had to entertain ourselves and a lot of it was by playing games baseball, basketball, whatever we could come up with we'd make up games. So you were not just a bookworm you were

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also a jock. I was kind of a tomboy, yeah, and, and my siblings are very competitive and you know that about me as well, Pauline, so, we had a lot of a lot of brawls on the basketball court and, so,

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And none of them are, well, your siblings are not very tall either for the most part, but you are, you have to be, be. I think well I'm about your stature is a little bit less than some others, no? I think Tracy is the tallest, she's 5'7, but

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all the rest of us are 5'2 or like to say we're 5'2, yeah, yeah. So, so by the time you got to Princeton, I assume there still weren't very many women in the especially in the math department there, oh boy, there weren't. I think

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I might have been one of 2 in the math department at the time wow, was that weird? It was very the math department was very weird. I didn't realize it when I went to Princeton that it was not practical math. It was all theoretical and many

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of the people in the math department have won Nobel Prizes on these theories and I would go to this, the class that I hit the brick wall in and they would be talking about some weird theory that you couldn't write an equation about or

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even conceptualize and other people in the class would be hey we could probably apply that to something they jump up on the board and start writing things that made no sense to me it was very weird and there was a young man in the class with

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me. He must have been 13 at the time, 13 years old, yes, he was brilliant, a math genius, so I really felt out of place there, but once I got to Princeton, I, I really found my home. Not that people were like me at

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all. There was just such a diversity of people there, all of my roommates. We came from completely different backgrounds, different religions, one was French. They were Completely different from me, but we found a common bond. We respected each other. And they have remained my friends

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for life. I still see them at least once a year. That's amazing. So it was just a wide open. Exactly what I was looking for. I remember having theoretical discussions with people about all different aspects of life, and there were so many brilliant people there. But

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they didn't have to brag about it. They could just be and you could be whoever you were and express yourself however you wanted. It was just so much freedom in the intellectual area. I just loved it. I, I just loved every minute of I,

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I, if I could have, I would have stayed there forever. so how long did you stick it out in the math department? 2 years and then I went to the history department and then I had to decide what the heck am I gonna do with

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myself. Well, before we get to that, so tell me more about the basketball. So they were gonna they were gonna start an intramural team for for women and then so how did, did they had and I think that as part of my class they actually got

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4 women who had played pretty high level basketball and so they made it a varsity sport our freshman year, which was great. However, our coach was the hockey coach. And she didn't know anything about basketball, so she did get a fellow who had played

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basketball in high school but couldn't make the team at Princeton, and he was our assistant coach. He was great. So you were on the team as a freshman, as a freshman, but the university didn't give us much support. We had to buy our own

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uniforms. We had to buy everything related to including basketballs and to play our inter to practice and to play our intercollegiate games we had to kick the guys off the basketball courts in the old gym because we were not allowed to play in the new gym

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that was only for the varsity men's team. They needed 3 different basketball courts apparently, so but I will say when Title IX hit. Got passed, we went as a team to the athletic director that was while you were in college. Well, yeah, sophomore

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year, I think, or maybe end of sophomore year, and we went to the athletic director, made an appointment and met with him and said, you know, we'd now like to get you to pay for our uniforms. We'd like a real coach 74 by 74/75. You know, give

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us all the equipment we need. We'd like to play in the main gym, and he said, well, I'll, I'll take that under consideration and I'll get back to you. Am my friend on the team who is now a prominent lawyer stood up and said, No,

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you won't get back to us. You can get back to our attorney and handed a card over to him and of course they realized they had to do. Title IX said we had to have. You know, really, not it wasn't even the same as the men

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got just so we got something, and they hired a coach who had played basketball at Immaculata, not a hockey coach a basketball coach, and we got, and from then on we, we even freshman year because we had so many women that were talented we won. I,

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I never lost an Ivy League game while I was at Princeton. That's amazing. And but by my senior year we not only won the Ivy League decisively but we went to Eastern's and beat Seton Hall in Eastern's and got to go to the Nationals, which

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was where it was in Akron, Ohio. What a hot spot and of course this was before NCAA women's sports. It was AIAW, which didn't have a lot of money, but. Yeah, we had a great, a great career as a college, but it really again. The

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entire team have been my friends for life again we're very different, but geographically they're all around all over yeah Nashville and you know all over the country so it's been that was a great part of my college career. Except for the math part,

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so, so you're in math and I survived that. So you decided to move to history and then what were you thinking about what you would do after? Well, by that time my oldest sister Priscilla had gone to was going to law school at Villanova, and she

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loved it. So I thought, well, you know, I can do that because I don't know how to get a job. At that time, it was right after the very end of the Vietnam War, and there was a very strong anti-business anti-government sentiment on

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campuses at the time, so really there were no recruiters for businesses or if there were none of my classmates would admit they were interviewing with the, you know, the CIA or anything. So I did decide to go to law school. And it was

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also another I went to Villanova where my sister had gone and I mean it was very cheap. Were you there at the same time as her? I can't remember she finished. She's 3 years older so she had finished and actually it was good because I

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got the job she had which is was as a dorm counselor at the college next door, Rosemont, so I got free room and board. I don't know if you saw the news today. Rosemont is being absorbed by Villanova, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that had been talked

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about forever, but, all right, so you were in charge of the dorm. I was in charge of the dorm and actually they paid me extra to sit at night to make sure the girls didn't sneak boys back after the bars closed. Wow, so you were

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popular, huh? I sat and read my book. You know, if what I didn't see had nothing to do with anything. Your nose was in the book. You didn't see a thing. I didn't actually one time I told them you really you can't bring the guys

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right through the front door. The whole first floor has windows that you can climb into right? But please just don't let me lose my job. So then they were like, oh, OK, so I did my job. All right, so you're in law school at Villanova and

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there were more women in law school than there had been in your Princeton classes, I guess, way more, I think, I think really by the time I graduated law school it was 50/50. It was great and another advantage of Villanova that I thought was

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an advantage was they really taught to the Pennsylvania bar and you wanted to practice or you wanted to be in Pennsylvania. I wanted to be in Pennsylvania. So, however, and for 5 years nobody had flunked the Pennsylvania bar from Villanova until my year. And then

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4 people flogged, but luckily it wasn't me but I might have taken it more seriously if I had known that but so were you thinking, you would go back to Wellsboro or what were you thinking as far as your after law school life? That

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was my initial thought. So the summer after my first year at law school, I worked for my father, and your sister, she did that as well. She was working with him also. At the time she, when she graduated, she went back to Wellsboro. However, it was

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a disaster for me because I told you my father is very theoretical and theatrical, and he was very. Did a lot of things on the fly. And he was overworked and it was just chaos there. And he would say we're gonna go try this.

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It's a, you know. Whatever kind of case and I'd be like, where can I look to see. What that case is about, he goes, I don't know. I'll we'll talk about it on the drive over to the courthouse. So that reminds me. So research then was

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done how with books, right, with books, yeah, yeah, yeah. So obviously they had them at the Villanova Law Library, but your dad didn't have any for that that summer when you were there, correct? Oh wow, they did have in the courthouse they had a library. That

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did have the reporters and all of the lawyers could use it and that courthouse was in Wellsboro yeah OK well but imagine. You know, they, they really didn't do any research. It was, there wasn't enough time. Now my father had, it's very frightening to me. I

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didn't know anything. My father had practiced for 40 years. He knew everything, but I did not feel comfortable being thrown into that mess, and I saw my sister literally thrown into that mess as a, you know, first year associate handling cases and trying she stepped

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up to the plate though she was able to stand up on her own 2 feet and you know make an argument but I again was the bookworm in the back of the room thinking I can never do that. OK, well that's a good experience then. It was

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excellent. So the next year, so you're back in law school for your 2L, and I took some labor law classes and I loved them. I loved the teacher. He was very good and I took a seminar and I got a job that summer at the NLRB.

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In DC writing memos for the labor relations board on different labor issues. It was the perfect job for me. And then I came back to law school and I wanted to stay in Philadelphia, you know what, back up. How, how did you do in law school?

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I know, but I want you to say it. I did very well in law school, so you were on law review. I was on law review. I, I ended up 3rd in my class, so I did the usual interviewing with all of the big law

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firms and did not get a single offer. That, that is, I know, unbelievable. So did you interview just in Philly or other cities too? Just in Philly. And you didn't get a single offer even though you were 3rd in your class. Yes, yes,

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I was a terribly introverted, quiet person. I was the worst person that you would want to interview. And I don't think anybody who interviewed thought I would be able to be a lawyer, even one that sat in the back room and wrote contracts. So you don't think

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it was sexism at all. You think it was no, you don't, no, because I mean at Villanova there were a lot of women at the top of the class and on law review. They all got jobs. They all got good jobs at the good firms. So

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I ended up because I liked labor law, I applied to a couple of small labor law firms and I got a job. Which was perfect. I took. I don't even remember the name of the firm now in DC, no, in Philly in Philadelphia. And I took

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the bar and then I was supposed to start this Tuesday after Labor Day and I called the week before to see what time the office opened. And the secretary said, oh, I'll have to have Mr. So and so call you back. I said, no, no, no,

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I don't need him to call me back. Uh, I'm starting Tuesday and I just need to know what time to be there. And then I got a letter in the mail saying I'm sorry we can't, you know, extend an offer to you already had extended. I

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know and that being the lawyer that I was, I had the contract where they had made me an offer, expressed the amount of the salary, and I had accepted it and I'm explaining this to my mother and she said, what was the name of that

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firm? She goes, Oh, I just read in the Inquirer they've gone out of business. Oh jeez, I know now it's, you know, the week before Labor Day. Oh wow, so you did not know this until you were on the eve of starting, yeah, right, right. So

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luckily for me. I ran down to the job board. They used to post jobs on a board out at Villanova outside the guidance counselor's office, and there was one posting. And it was Judge Goldhaber from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania bankruptcy court looking for

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a law clerk. Now you say normally judges hire years in advance, like at least a year in advance. Well, the bankruptcy code had just passed and this was his first time he could hire a law clerk and the job would start October 1. Which was perfect.

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Well, yeah, so I applied for it even though I had taken one bankruptcy class, that's more than probably most people at the time, I think that's right, and we hadn't learned anything about the bankruptcy code. We learned about the Bankruptcy Act, which was no longer in

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effect. Yeah, perfect, yeah so but I went and I got an interview with Judge Goldhaber. He told 3 jokes, didn't ask a single question, showed me out the back way. Which convinced me I did not have a job and the next morning his secretary called to

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say, well, the judge has made up his mind. I'm like yeah why are you calling me? And she was like, don't you want the job? I said, he's not hiring me, is he? And she's like, yes, yes, he thought you were very personable, so which of

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course you are, which I wasn't at the time, but I laughed at his jokes so and that just turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. It really was. He was so great. He was certainly beloved by the Philadelphia

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bankruptcy bar. He was a very nice person. He was a wonderful person. He knew everything. He'd been on the bench for like 20 or 30 years by the time I got. Was he a bankruptcy trustee? He was a referee, a referee, yes, he was, and,

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he knew everything and he was very kind. I would write these opinions, draft opinions for him and give it to him and he go, he would look at it and he said this is very well written. You might, however, want to consider the 3rd Circuit opinion

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that is directly on point. Did they not have books there? They did, but I missed it, so OK. So, it was, he was just a great teacher. I didn't know what kind of, what did you do as a clerk? I know people, every judge kind

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of does it a little differently. What what what was your everyday every day was to go in and sit and write an opinion. It was, it was nirvana for me. I loved it. Then the bank, then things got really busy as people realized what you

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could do with the bankruptcy code, and there were all these unknown issues that Judge Goldhaber would say it's not exactly like it was under the act. This is how we would have done it under the Act. So let's try and figure if the bankruptcy code has changed

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enough to change that. So that was very exciting. Some parts of the code were directly based on the act, right, and the legislative history would tell you that would tell you that but if it didn't, if it was something new, you were on your own. So

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I felt like we made some new law and again he gave me free rein as he liked my writing, which was good. And I loved writing and then after I was with him for 3 years that's long for a clerkship. It's very long. I thought

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I was gonna be with him forever and he slowly he realized that I shouldn't be staying there and he did this without even consulting. He started pushing me to sit in court more, OK? And then we talk about the case afterwards and he'd say, you

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know, you know the law more than they do, you know, you could do this. So slowly he pushed me out of the nest, so he really was your mentor not just your boss. Oh he was just. Oh yeah, he was great. He was wonderful. So you did, you were sitting in more in

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court and what did and I did realize that I could probably stand up and and make that argument because at least I've read the cases. Now there was a lot of consumer cases in Philly back then and Chapter 11s, right? So did you, did you

00:28:57.989 - 00:29:17.930

know what kind of I wanted to do, I wanted to do business. It was more interesting. He had the Philadelphia at that time had a lot of big cases. They had a huge maker of sneakers, Brooks Brooks shoes that ended up being bought

00:29:17.930 - 00:29:34.630

by Revlon, so we had a lot of high powered lawyers from New York and all over the country who would come in and at that time the bankruptcy judge actually held the auction. So we had lots of very exciting cases and hearings, that

00:29:34.630 - 00:29:50.979

was just terrific and yeah, I did gravitate towards the business end. Well, I mean, being a math major, I guess at least you understood a balance sheet and. Yeah, which is more than some of us knew when we started this, yeah, yeah. I had taken

00:29:50.979 - 00:30:09.949

some good econ classes too, so that was good. My favorite econ class as an aside at Princeton. We spent a week learning what a balance sheet was, what a, you know, accounting, general accounting. And then the professor said, OK, you've learned the basics of accounting. Now

00:30:09.949 - 00:30:28.250

I'm gonna teach you how to spot fraud. And it was fabulous. It was like every week was a mystery. He'd give us a new balance sheet or financial statement, and we had to figure out what was wrong with it and how they were, you know, committing

00:30:28.250 - 00:30:42.390

fraud on the creditors or shareholders a law school class or this was in Princeton at Princeton, yeah, it was a great class, and that has translated into some of the stuff you and I did at Clark Ladner trying to figure out. What was wrong with that

00:30:42.390 - 00:30:55.640

company? So did you, did you know whether you want to be on the debtor side or creditor side, and that didn't matter to you? I think all of the firms that I interviewed with were on the debtor side because in Philadelphia if you were on the

00:30:55.640 - 00:31:13.849

creditor side you were representing one of the Philadelphia banks because everything was asset based lending at that time no hedge funds remember the days when the lender was just literally a bank. One lender, yeah, yeah, one lender in a bank and a bank in the

00:31:13.849 - 00:31:26.410

neighborhood who was concerned about whether or not that business will go out of business that would not look good for the bank or the community. Yeah, it was a different world. So tell me about your search for a position after, you know, judge, the judge is

00:31:26.410 - 00:31:43.790

kind of pushing you out the door a little bit, pushing me out the door a little bit. So I went, I interviewed with, most of the bankruptcy firms in town, the larger ones, none of the boutiques though, and I got two offers. And one

00:31:43.790 - 00:31:57.810

of them the guy who made the offer was a jerk. And even though it was a better firm, I decided I wanted to go with Clark Ladner, which seemed like more like a nice place to work, a nice place to work, and at that time Cathy

00:31:57.810 - 00:32:14.569

Farrell, who became my judicial assistant, was Ed Toole's secretary and obviously she loved it and she was, really. Made me see that it really was a home there, so since, the, the reader of this is not gonna know anything about Cathy, you would say

00:32:14.569 - 00:32:32.939

a little bit about Cathy and how enthusiastic she is as a personality. She is kind of the opposite of me. She was my judicial assistant now she just retired. She was my judicial assistant for 21 years and. She and I were yin and yang. I could

00:32:32.939 - 00:32:50.839

do my work and then she could handle all of the stuff that I had no interest in how to find out what was going on in the clerk's office, how to schmooze the administrative office and get things that we needed here done, the

00:32:50.839 - 00:33:08.579

best thing she ever did one time. I made the mistake of booking my own airfare for a conference. And about 2 weeks before the conference, I realized I booked the wrong day. Now of course we were well beyond the time when they would change the flight

00:33:08.579 - 00:33:23.229

for free. I gave it to her and said, listen, see what you can do. I don't know if there's even any seats on the right day. It took her an hour, but she came back and told me that yes, I was able to do it. There's

00:33:23.229 - 00:33:40.550

no fee, and by the way, the person I talked to has a place down at Rehoboth Beach, and she's invited me to go down there this summer. So she made a new best friend, so, so back when you were choosing Clark Ladner, she was like

00:33:40.550 - 00:34:00.130

the cheerleader for Clark Ladner. She was one, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Now she had started there right out of high school and when Ed interviewed her, he next called her neighbor, who was his cousin to check up on her. Do you know this girl and what she

00:34:00.130 - 00:34:15.250

like and oh, she went to, you know, Prendy at the Catholic, high school, and, OK, she's all right, I'll hire her. So it's a very small world. So what year is this now that you started at Clark Ladner or that you were interviewing 1982 and

00:34:15.250 - 00:34:35.070

I started in August of 1982. And that week Clark Ladner filed the largest Chapter 11 case that had ever been filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Wow and what was that? Windsor Communications Group, the greeting card company. They made greeting cards, so it was a fabulous

00:34:35.070 - 00:34:50.449

time to be there. It was so exciting. We had so much work that everybody was swamped with work. We worked from 10 in the morning till 10 at night and loved every minute of it. How big was the bankruptcy group? 5. 5 of us at the time. OK so

00:34:50.879 - 00:35:02.530

and then, so explain a little bit about, I, and I do remember this from the old days, like to get your retainer, how did you get your retainer back then for a big case? Do you remember? It wasn't like you got a wire transfer, right?

00:35:02.610 - 00:35:14.560

You didn't get any wire transfers. No, I think they brought in a check and you had to wait for it to clear before you could file. That might be why it took 4 days before we filed at the end of the week, but on that,

00:35:14.659 - 00:35:35.800

on that line. That fall, marathon pipeline came down and it said the bankruptcy judges don't have any jurisdiction basically. So, and everybody was afraid the district courts are gonna withdraw all our cases. What are we gonna do? The district court passed an emergency order

00:35:35.800 - 00:35:59.090

that said that the bankruptcy courts can handle the cases that are currently pending. Well, in The Windsor case, when we filed bankruptcy, all of the customers stopped paying Windsor. So we were thinking, what are we gonna do? I think we have to sue them. So at

00:35:59.090 - 00:36:14.800

Thanksgiving, right around, you know, marathon time when it was, you know, got the order that, you know, we can handle what we have. The decision was made. We have to sue all of the customers who have not paid us, so we ended up filing 2000 adversary

00:36:14.800 - 00:36:32.780

proceedings in the space of three weeks. Wow. So because with arguably not much jurisdiction for some of them under marathon. Well, with none except that if they were pending as of December 31, we could keep them, got it. So we did, but Joe Simmons calls me

00:36:32.780 - 00:36:48.489

and says, Walrath, you're filing 2000 adversaries. You know I need checks and I said Joe, can you at least do us a favor? Can I give the clerk of the court? Joe, can we do one check instead of 2000 checks? He said, Yes, I would appreciate

00:36:48.489 - 00:37:02.760

that. He goes, I'll take care of the, you know, bookkeeping from my end, but so I had to walk down there with a. Check for the filing fee for the 2000 and get them all stamped in. It was a nightmare, but was Judge Goldhaber still a

00:37:02.760 - 00:37:18.449

judge then? He was, right? He was and, and there were there other, there were others a Judge King, Bill King, and Tom Twardowski in Reading, right? And Judge King got Windsor. Who got Windsor? Judge King got Windsor, yeah, yeah, so. I assume you were in court

00:37:18.449 - 00:37:35.780

a lot. We were in court all the time and it was great because the young associate, I was a first year I was a 5 month associate and I was handling matters in court. I also got some more advanced cases because when it all hit Ed

00:37:35.780 - 00:37:51.760

started transferring cases from Nancy Alquist who was a two year associate at the time and so I got to handle all different kinds of matters. It was great and just to follow on that Judge Alquist, your 2 year ahead of you associate is

00:37:51.760 - 00:38:09.729

now also a bankruptcy judge, correct? Yes, in Maryland yeah yeah so it was a breeding ground for judges apparently, yes, it was, yes, and another associate Holly Ford became a court of common police judge, so. Yeah, it was a breeding ground, um. But it

00:38:09.729 - 00:38:25.250

was a perfect place to work. We worked nonstop. We loved every minute of it. You got so much experience being so busy and, do you remember how many hours you worked back then? Like, did you 2800 the first year, the first year, the 1st 6

00:38:25.250 - 00:38:42.949

months, I did not, I said we worked 10 to 10. That was including Saturday and Sunday. I did not get a day off for 6 months and then Judge King decided he was gonna go on vacation for a week. Well, so I went into my boss

00:38:42.949 - 00:39:00.239

and to and said, Judge King is going on vacation next week. Can I have the weekend off? And his response was, well, I don't know about that. Have you filed all your time sheets? And I said no, he said, OK, well then you can be the

00:39:00.239 - 00:39:15.530

judge of whether you can take a weekend off. So I marched right out of there and I went to my secretary and said book me on the first flight out of the country, any place, any place with an island so she did and. Do you remember

00:39:15.530 - 00:39:29.850

where you went? I went to the Bahamas. It was great. I got one of those by yourself, one of those Apple was it Apple tours that did the five days on an island, yeah, so I did that. It was fabulous and when I came back, you

00:39:29.850 - 00:39:43.675

know, I did my time sheets, but I didn't, you didn't wait. I did not wait. You were. You were due from your vacation. So what, what other kind of cases did you work on at Clark Ladner? Well, and you were there a long time, right? Like

00:39:43.675 - 00:39:58.830

you, you started. '82 till it ended up collapsing in '96, so we'll get to that later, but tell me a little bit about your practice. Oh, had a great practice. Ed had a rule that you had to handle a small case all on

00:39:58.830 - 00:40:14.610

your own, medium sized case with one or two people on the team, and then be involved in the largest cases we had everybody had a role in the large cases, and he really gave you a lot of responsibility. He did not micromanage at all. He,

00:40:14.709 - 00:40:29.310

would be there if you had a question, but he didn't tell you how to do and he was great with the clients he would bring the client in and say, you know, this is my new associate she clerked for a bankruptcy judge. She knows everything

00:40:29.310 - 00:40:44.689

there is about bankruptcy. She knows more than I do about bankruptcy you're in good hands and he did that really for most of the people in the department. He built them up to the clients. Ad really wanted them to succeed that made him look good,

00:40:44.719 - 00:40:56.870

and he was, he was a great, manager of people I used to say how did you get clients back then? Did you have a, I mean, was the firm the kind of firm that had a lot of in-house clients or did you? The firm had

00:40:56.870 - 00:41:13.189

a great business department and I did a lot of bankruptcy cases for clients of the business department. Vanity Fair was a big business client, and we were involved in two very large cases, one here in Delaware where Vanity Fair was looking to buy a company out

00:41:13.189 - 00:41:32.659

of bankruptcy. We also represented Butcher and Singer, which was an investment house and they had invested in a lot of single asset real estate cases, the Biltmore Hotel in Florida and all over the country, and I they were considered mid-size cases. I really got to work

00:41:32.659 - 00:41:47.669

on those all along with the client and that was a lot of fun that was a great experience. And we had larger cases like Windsor and International Shoe was a huge shoe manufacturer. New York City shoes like there were a lot of shoes in

00:41:47.669 - 00:42:06.310

this. There were a lot of shoes in our, firm, but yeah, most of the business was generated by the business department, but just as I was coming up for partner, in those days it was almost automatic that you made partner if

00:42:06.310 - 00:42:25.280

you've been there 7 years. But it was changing just as I was up for partner and they were starting to look at, you know, did she generate any business on her own because that's gonna be a big piece of it. Thankfully for me. One of my

00:42:25.290 - 00:42:42.689

cousins got in trouble, so called me in and we filed the bankruptcy case for the Broad Street Hospital. Uh, and your cousin was involved in that hospital, his father, and then as a result of that we got yellow cab company, so two huge cases and I

00:42:42.689 - 00:42:57.699

got the origination for it, so it was perfect timing. I didn't get any large originations like that ever again, but I did make partner. You know, I do have this memory of you when I was a young associate of Clark Ladner that you would. Some

00:42:57.699 - 00:43:14.649

partners went to the little kitchen and poured themselves a drink at 5 o'clock. You went to the ladies' room and changed changed in the jeans for basically your second shift, jeans and a t-shirt instead of wearing pantyhose and a suit the whole time, yeah, because I

00:43:14.649 - 00:43:28.159

would like to go into the library and sit down and. At the time, read the books and read the cases and figure out if I had a theory of how to get a case done. I do remember you working very hard that does stick out

00:43:28.159 - 00:43:46.030

to me, and so you had yellow cab, you had, you said you represented Vanity Fair, Butcher and Singer, at some point, Judge Goldhaber retired and joined Clark Ladner, right? Yeah, so did you, were you involved in that? Yeah, yeah, that had to be something.

00:43:46.120 - 00:43:59.830

It was special. He was just such a great mentor, and I thought he could be a mentor to the rest of us at the firm, so what was the bankruptcy bar like back then in Philly? How many were there lots of women or not very

00:43:59.830 - 00:44:20.919

many? There were a handful of women. And we recognized how rare we were, so we started getting together and having lunch groups like Midge Rendell and Rosetta Packer at the time and Leslie Baskin, a handful of other women at all the different

00:44:20.919 - 00:44:38.510

firms and we would share, you know, each firm would be the host of that week, that month's, women's luncheon. It was a good. Good group and recently they somebody said something at the Eastern District of Pennsylvania conference about oh remember when they had that,

00:44:38.790 - 00:44:53.149

you know, women's group thing and I said uh I'm sounding, you know, they're sounding like it happened, you know, in in a different, uh, century, uh, we were all there and it was probably only like 10-12 people, right? Or less than that, yeah, less than half

00:44:53.149 - 00:45:14.949

dozen people, yeah, yeah. But yeah it was great yeah bankruptcy for some even now I think is still male dominated although it's changing, yeah but back then I assume it was back you know back then there were bankruptcy boutiques. And very little, a couple

00:45:14.949 - 00:45:34.649

of the larger firms started having bankruptcy departments and ultimately the bankruptcy boutiques were the good lawyers from them were absorbed into larger firms. It was a changing dynamic at the time. Yeah, I think bankruptcy still had a stigma back then, right, that it might

00:45:34.649 - 00:45:49.760

not be a big moneymaker for a for a big law firm, right, right. And then some of those firms I assume represented banks and had a lot of conflicts yeah and yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of the firms in Philadelphia are exactly what you think the

00:45:49.760 - 00:46:06.620

white shoe firms that are very waspy. And male dominated, yeah, so you were, you were a bookworm and for Judge Goldhaber you like to write the opinions. So what did you like the best about practice? I assume you researching or writing. Oh, you still did.

00:46:06.709 - 00:46:19.550

You didn't, you didn't love being in court. I did like being in court and as I got used to it, I liked it more and more and by the end of my career as a lawyer, that was the fun part, but I still liked writing.

00:46:20.090 - 00:46:38.389

You know, I'd liked being able to sit down and think and research and figure out the puzzle because bankruptcy is a puzzle. Why did the company go into bankruptcy? How can we solve their problems? How are we gonna put together a plan that satisfies everybody?

00:46:38.639 - 00:46:54.899

I love the puzzle of it. Yes, do you have any unsavory characters as your clients? Oh boy, we had the, yes, we had several clients from hell. I had one in particular who made a habit of screaming at me. And cursing, so I would

00:46:54.899 - 00:47:08.040

hold the phone out and then try and get a word in edgeways and then I'd hang up and then he'd call back and say, I think we got disconnected. No, I hung up on you. Don't use that language, so yeah, we all and of course

00:47:08.419 - 00:47:32.330

I got him through his bankruptcy case. And then I must have been driving to Reading cause one day I'm driving down the road listening to the news and they have arrested him. For what bankruptcy fraud? No, they have arrested him for hiring an undercover cop who

00:47:32.330 - 00:47:48.699

purported to be a hit man to kill an IRS agent. What? What is right? I almost went off the road because he had a very distinctive name, and you wouldn't, you know, we don't have to, we don't have to say no, we don't. He did end

00:47:48.699 - 00:48:10.169

up going to jail. He had tried to hire the IRS agent, not because he had a tax problem but because his ex-girlfriend was now dating the IRS agent. So Wow, see how you have Vanity Fair on one side and you have this guy on

00:48:10.169 - 00:48:23.409

the other side. You had all kinds of cases. It sounds like big and small, yeah, exactly, so I guess talk about you made partner, right? Well, you were, you were saying that it was changing, but you, you had these two big originations, so you made

00:48:23.409 - 00:48:47.469

it in 7 years. OK, so did life change measurably after that or not really? Well, financially, actually, it became worse our first year. We made no money. And in fact, to the credit of the other partners. They said that. They would divvy it up so that

00:48:47.469 - 00:49:04.469

the 3 new partners that made partner that year. Would be paid at least what their salary was as an associate so it was just a bad year it was a horrible year firmwide so that worked and actually that taught me a lesson and it was

00:49:04.469 - 00:49:22.310

great because I ended up never drawing more than my last year associate salary. That was your choice. That was my choice and I'm so that at the end of the year when the profit was split up I would end up getting a check. And not

00:49:22.310 - 00:49:43.340

have to, so I never increased when I started there were 32 lawyers. I think by the time I made partner, probably 50 or 60. And then at one point I think the highest we ever got was 125 when we absorbed that

00:49:43.340 - 00:50:01.750

that environmental group, but Yeah, it was a small firm. Well, it was a medium sized firm they said at the time, but now it would be. It's an old firm, right? I mean, it had been around like 80 years, yeah, yeah, so, uh, we had that

00:50:01.750 - 00:50:15.750

was not the only bad year, right? We had a party for the 80th anniversary of the firm and by the 90th anniversary of the firm it was collapsed. Yeah, I do remember that. I, I did live through that part. Yeah, that was

00:50:15.750 - 00:50:34.030

the hard part but actually. The last years when there was all that fighting and divisiveness. The partners were actually making more money than they had ever made. It was not a financial issue. So I mean without getting too granular, I mean what caused the firm

00:50:34.030 - 00:50:55.969

to, you know, start performing poorly financially or it never did so why did it did it became very divisive. We had divisive leadership who decided that it was sounds familiar decided that he would be the king and he would reward people who did what

00:50:55.969 - 00:51:17.179

he said that sounds so familiar and remove compensation from anybody else so the bankruptcy department which was making a huge amount of money, all of the bankruptcy partners compensation got cut. It was ridiculous and was it just this one person or was there a 3 man

00:51:18.260 - 00:51:37.620

committee but they were all other people on the committee were from the Admiralty department which was the lowest hourly billing department and the lowest revenue department, and they were making more money than the bankruptcy department part so it got political, very political. And then that managing

00:51:37.620 - 00:51:58.510

partner decided that it was time to merge with another firm and cut a deal with a firm without telling the partners. And this is not known my cousin was at that firm. And called me and said, I hear we're gonna be merging. Really? Wow. Who did

00:51:58.510 - 00:52:15.820

you hear that from? So I reported it to Ed, your your department chair, my department chair, and we had a little, and he was not on management committee either, so he didn't know either and neither did Peter Clauss, the head of the business department. Wow,

00:52:16.590 - 00:52:36.899

so. So that brought it all to a head. And so what year was this? 1995. And so we hired a consultant who tried to, you know, mend the ways and it was decided that we would not. Continue to be that took like what a year and

00:52:36.899 - 00:52:53.360

a half or so because it did, yeah, so it ended up closing the doors at the end of December of '96. Yeah, OK, so, so. So what, what happened to you during this process where the firm is starting to little by little downsize and well

00:52:53.360 - 00:53:14.219

they all decided the partners appointed a special committee and the special committee was going to determine. If we were able to survive, we'd have to downsize. And many of us believed that we would simply cut off the department that was not earning any money, the admiralty department, that's

00:53:14.219 - 00:53:35.360

not what happened. Instead, two of the bankruptcy partners were fired, and other. And other good attorneys, I think there were 6 or 7 of us who were fired in March so kind of a chainsaw approach without thinking about merit. OK, yeah, sounds familiar,

00:53:35.830 - 00:53:50.080

So, it was kind of, you know, I was 42 at the time, I think, and it was like, you know, hit and be clear you were one of those two. I was one of the two bankruptcy partners who was fired and it hit

00:53:50.080 - 00:54:07.270

me in the gut. Now what am I gonna do with my life, and at that time bankruptcies were not as thriving in the Eastern Districts of Pennsylvania as they once were. yeah, Philadelphia was beginning to lose business, and I had another problem. I

00:54:07.270 - 00:54:25.090

had a client I was working with had a bankruptcy case with a large chemical company and it was in a dispute with its bank which was a Philadelphia bank. So when I went out to find a job and told them I had origination I could bring

00:54:25.090 - 00:54:40.850

with me, nobody wanted that case they were not willing to be be against a large, I think it was PNC at the time and nobody wanted even if they didn't represent PNC. I mean half the firms in town represented PNC and the other didn't want to

00:54:40.850 - 00:54:56.139

sue PNC so I decided, well, I can finish this case. I want to finish this for the client. So I made an arrangement with Clark Ladner they had extra space. Can I just stay here? Yes, you can stay here. I recall they had a they

00:54:56.139 - 00:55:11.459

had a lot of extra space, and I called my sister who had her own firm RF and Coolidge, and I said, listen. I need malpractice insurance. I'm now on my own. I'm gonna finish up this case. She goes, OK, I'll add you to our policy. So

00:55:11.459 - 00:55:25.939

I said, All right, bill me, and she called me up. She said there's no bill. Now there are 3 lawyers instead of 2, so it's the same actually joined. I became a partner which was then your sister's firm, a partner of Walrath and Coolidge, yeah, and

00:55:25.939 - 00:55:41.000

Judge Scholl, I'd go down to court, he says, Who is this Coolidge that you're now partners with? I didn't have the heart to tell him I wasn't even the Walrath mentioned. Oh my goodness. So, so you joined Walrath and Coolidge in Wellsboro based in Wellsboro, but you

00:55:41.000 - 00:55:55.100

sat in Philadelphia in the Clark Ladner offices of the people who just fired you. Yes, yes, yes, it was a. Yes, I bet it was. Did, did you keep your office? Oh no, I had to like I moved into a conference room, OK,

00:55:55.260 - 00:56:10.570

yeah, OK, but did you get any support from the firm or not? Oh no, well, you know who I got support from. I got support from the IT people and from the copy jocks and you know because I've been nice to people but they

00:56:10.570 - 00:56:27.300

fired my secretary and moved me out of my office and but the funny thing is that towards the end of the year, everybody was leaving because they at the time you went the firm was gonna still survive in a in a smaller, smaller form that didn't work

00:56:27.300 - 00:56:41.850

out that did not work out and then eventually everybody started, I mean it was, you know, rats leaving the ship, so I would go around and, oh, here's a stapler. I can use this staple. Oh, here's some Scotch tape and here's reams of paper. So it

00:56:41.850 - 00:56:56.159

was, it worked out for me, but it was good of your client to stick with you even though you were pretty much on your own, you know, the the case was almost over and actually the CFO of the company was great. He was a great

00:56:56.159 - 00:57:17.790

guy and actually, when the case was closed, the bankruptcy case was closed, he got fired. So I hired him to help fix up my house in Philadelphia. Norm Hanratty he was working on it, but he had finished, and he had another job. So Bernie and his

00:57:17.790 - 00:57:31.270

boys went in and finished up, my house, so that you were, so you had a house in Philly, a row house, a row house, yeah, yeah, so you could walk to work, walk to work, yeah, it was great. I loved Philadelphia. I

00:57:31.270 - 00:57:46.560

loved walking. I was in much better shape than I am now you're in pretty good shape, but. So you're, you're working for Walrath and Coolidge. You finished this case, and then what's the plan after that or what, what were you, were you looking? What were

00:57:46.560 - 00:58:05.320

you thinking? I was looking and then I ultimately found a job with the construction. A law firm that did construction work and they had been referring out bankruptcy cases to different people and I heard they didn't have any in-house people to do it correct

00:58:05.320 - 00:58:23.600

so I made a deal with them that I would handle their bankruptcy cases and I'd bring in cases. Was it what's the name of the firm? Jacoby Donner and that has since collapsed too. Wow, there's the theme going here I know. Every firm I'm associated with

00:58:23.850 - 00:58:39.540

ends up in the bankruptcy court now so, they did you, do you have enough work to keep busy with them, or was it just kind of a it was no I didn't I assume it was not that stimulating for you. It was not, and

00:58:39.540 - 00:58:54.419

I really wasn't getting any business from them, so it's probably hard for you to track business too without any you had no associates, just, just you. It was me, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I got some work. I got some work from Kevin Carey and some work

00:58:54.419 - 00:59:08.790

from Ed DiDonato, who had clerked with Judge King when I clerked for Judge Goldhaber, so I did start, I was starting to generate it, but at the end of, by the end of that year, and that was the end of '97, I realized I have

00:59:08.790 - 00:59:28.739

to get out of here. I've got to find another position, either go out on my own. In Philly though, in Philadelphia, or, do something, but in the back of my mind was that there would be a bankruptcy judgeship, two actually, opening up at the

00:59:28.739 - 00:59:44.120

end in [2000] in Philly in Philadelphia. So if I could hang on for two more years, I was gonna apply for one of those positions going backwards now. Did you, when you were clerking for Judge Goldhaber, did you think this is something you might

00:59:44.120 - 00:59:57.340

want to do some days be a judge? Yes, and he always told me you would be a perfect, you'd be a very good judge. You like to write, you like to research, you like to think about the problem, so you really ought to consider this and

00:59:57.340 - 01:00:17.409

in fact in 1986, I had been a lawyer for 4 years. He called me up and said there's gonna be an opening in our court and you really ought to put your name in. So I went to Ed Toole and said

01:00:18.080 - 01:00:33.239

said that and he said. You can't be a judge after 4 years of practicing. That's a horrible idea. You don't, you don't know enough. You really need to practice longer. So I ended up not applying for it. There was, I forget, there's a requirement that you

01:00:33.239 - 01:00:44.879

have to be in practice so many years before, maybe it was there wasn't at the time there was no requirement at the time. So, but yeah, he, it made perfect sense. I, so you obviously have this in the back of your mind that you might want

01:00:44.879 - 01:00:57.000

to be a judge someday, always, always, OK. And then, you know, when you lose your job twice or 3 times in a row, then you kind of start thinking more seriously about what do I want to do with the rest of my life. Yeah, but you

01:00:57.000 - 01:01:11.449

were, so when you were at Jacoby Donner, you were in your 40s. Right, 42. Well, in '98 when I took the bench, I was 44. OK, so I was 43. So how did it come about that you landed in Wilmington, Delaware? You helped me, Pauline.

01:01:11.679 - 01:01:32.709

I was home for the holidays and I got a call from my friend Pauline Morgan who said, hey. It probably isn't something you'd consider, and you could never get it, but oh how encouraging I was. You were. Judge Balick is retiring and they're going to replace

01:01:32.709 - 01:01:47.330

her. So I think you ought to consider it and I said, well, all right, sounds great. So I did and then it came out and the legal intelligencer, the ad for it and uh so I put my name in and I told you, yep, I put,

01:01:47.419 - 01:02:08.909

you know, I pulled together application. The application turned out it was like 3 inches thick because they wanted every, you'll laugh at this. A copy of every decision. That was published in which you were the attorney of record. Oh wow. Now as you know, I appeared

01:02:08.909 - 01:02:27.639

before Judge Scholl and he wrote an opinion on every single thing, so I ended up not even copying every single one of his decisions that I was involved in. I think I did the top 25 so and I had 3 written decisions from the Third

01:02:27.639 - 01:02:43.149

Circuit where I had gotten to argue remember Ed let you do the whole case so you and I both got to argue before the 3rd Circuit on cases we were handling and so I had those to attach. But it was a really lengthy process and

01:02:43.149 - 01:02:56.629

I think it took me a month to pull everything together. Do you know much about practicing in Delaware? I knew nothing about practicing in Delaware. I had been here once for a bankruptcy auction, and that was about, I think I spent a half an hour in

01:02:56.629 - 01:03:11.709

court before Judge Balick, and that was it, but I assume you had some awareness. And I did at those times that Delaware was gaining in prominence. Oh absolutely, yeah, everybody knew about it and that was another reason I had no concept that I would

01:03:11.709 - 01:03:26.080

be qualified to do that work. Nobody knew me down here. I had appeared once, but it was a good process to go through the process and I just hoped I could get an interview so I could see what that process was and sure enough

01:03:26.080 - 01:03:39.659

I got an interview and I was so excited. And I knew I wasn't gonna get the job. I gotta say, sitting in Delaware at the time, there were a lot of people that just didn't think you would get the job because you were against a well

01:03:39.659 - 01:03:55.090

known bankruptcy lawyer in Delaware that everyone liked and everyone just assumed he was qualified, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, and nobody knew me. I mean, I was, I was the dark horse in that race, um, I was rooting for you. I knew you, but very few people

01:03:55.090 - 01:04:09.530

knew you. You're right, I know, but it was good that I knew I was not gonna get the job because I was very relaxed in the interview and I really used it as a way to garner some information, so I would be asking Tom Ambro was

01:04:09.530 - 01:04:23.340

on the committee. I just, so Tom, you know how do things work down here and you know what's the process and. You know, what do you like about having cases here and same thing with the other lawyers. I really and I really was not nervous at

01:04:23.340 - 01:04:39.479

all. They must have thought I was a. That's good for myself. I don't know, um, so it was, uh, so that's the you're talking about the merit selection merit selection panel and then I was as surprised as everybody else in Delaware that I got actually an

01:04:39.479 - 01:04:53.250

interview with the Third Circuit. And do you know if you were one of 2 or 3 or just one of 5. One of 5, OK, they put up 5 names at the time. And actually they put up 5 names, but the 3rd Circuit only chose to interview

01:04:53.250 - 01:05:11.639

4, and I can't even remember who number 5 was. I can't remember who the. Other than the prominent practitioner who was going to get the job, so I go to the interview. And it's before the entire 3rd Circuit. And the chief judges of every district

01:05:11.639 - 01:05:34.870

court in the circuit. So it's a long, long conference room table. Now was Midge Rendell a judge yet or not? There were 2 females there. Midge Rendell was the she was the most recently appointed judge, so she sat next to me. And Jane Roth, of course, from Delaware, so. Ed Becker explained

01:05:34.870 - 01:05:52.870

that every judge will get a chance to ask a question. So Midge Rendell is the newest judge we'll have her start off, and Midge Rendell proceeded to say how great I was and to point out that I had been a law clerk to Judge Goldhaber and

01:05:52.870 - 01:06:09.050

he thought I was terrific, and she just went on and sang my laurels. It was great. She was wonderful. That's amazing. And then we went around the room and I got some tough questions. One was from a Delaware judge who asked how

01:06:09.050 - 01:06:23.530

I thought I could possibly be a judge in Delaware. I had never practiced there, knew nothing about the practice there. Do you remember your answer? Yes, I do. I was so sure I wasn't gonna get the job that I just blurted it out well. You know

01:06:23.530 - 01:06:42.570

bankruptcy is a federal judgeship and it applies largely federal law although it does have to apply state law where property issues are involved and just like in my practice right now I'll look up the state law if I don't know it I said so I

01:06:42.570 - 01:06:59.929

think I'm. If I don't know the answer, I can look it up. So I guess they liked that answer, yeah, and then Judge Farnan, whom I had never met, who was the chief judge of the District court of Delaware at the time, said, now I'm the

01:06:59.929 - 01:07:14.550

chief judge of Delaware, so I get to ask you two questions, and I said, OK. And he said, well, the first question is, are you gonna play on our basketball team? And I started laughing. I said, Of course I will, you know, I played in college.

01:07:14.639 - 01:07:25.239

He goes, I saw you played in college. He said, Well, I played at King's College, he says, and I just, you know, before we let you on the team, I wanna be sure you're gonna get me the ball. And again I blurted out, well, I said,

01:07:25.320 - 01:07:41.459

Well, I'm a point guard and my job is to make you big guys look good, so of course I'll get you the ball. He told me later. That he liked that answer and that changed his mind. He said you trash talked right back at me and

01:07:41.790 - 01:07:56.629

I knew you could put up with the, you know, the New York lawyers who would come down here and push you around. So not that Philadelphia lawyer lawyers were that easy, no, but, but it was gonna be a bigger, bigger venue for you in a smaller

01:07:56.629 - 01:08:09.239

state, yeah, yeah. So you found out pretty soon thereafter, right? The end of the day by the end of the day, I actually, I got out and I called, got out of the interview and I called and talked to my sister Priscilla and I

01:08:09.239 - 01:08:22.370

said, I blew it, you know, I was just too laid back and, you know, I know I didn't answer any of their questions very well, so I think I'm in big fat trouble. And then 3 hours later I get a call from Ed Becker who

01:08:22.370 - 01:08:36.878

said, yeah, you have the job. I was like, what? Excuse me? So perfect. It was perfect. Yeah, I know I had to go into the ladies' room and jump up and down and silently scream to myself at Jacoby Donner because I hadn't told anybody I

01:08:36.878 - 01:08:49.318

applied. Oh wow, they didn't even know you were applying. Why would I tell them I wasn't gonna get the job and it was a dry run for Philadelphia anyway, so and it was gonna be probably a long haul too getting the FBI check and everything, so you

01:08:49.318 - 01:09:05.129

and it was, it was that was the hardest part of it because I found out April 29th. And it wasn't till the end of August that the FBI finished clearing me. So, and were you thinking you would just stay in Philly or were you thinking you

01:09:05.129 - 01:09:16.729

would move to Delaware? Did you think that far at all? I didn't think at all about what the heck's not that far. Well, the first thing I had to do was find a car because I was living in Philadelphia and didn't have a car, so I put

01:09:16.729 - 01:09:28.459

the word out with my family and my one sister called and said, Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is I found a car for you. The bad news is Mrs. so and so died. And she has donated the car to the

01:09:28.459 - 01:09:43.240

church, so you're gonna have to pay full price. It's like, well, of course, I'll pay full price. It had 4000 miles on it. It was and it was in great shape. So I got, I got a car and then I had to go look around and

01:09:43.240 - 01:09:55.629

find a house. Like, did you, did you find a house before you,, oh, couldn't, you were, you were commuting for a while to, yeah, I was commuting a lot to and from Philly. I was looking and couldn't find anything in my price range. And you

01:09:55.629 - 01:10:07.069

had to buy something within the circuit, is that, or did you have to be in Delaware? You did not have to be in Delaware, just within the circuit. So I ended up buying a house 2 miles into Pennsylvania. It's a great house. I lucked out again.

01:10:07.109 - 01:10:21.330

I lucked out on that. The woman had put it up for sale and then the sale fell through, so and it was January. It was December at this point, and she had already bought another house and needed to get out, so I was able to. Get

01:10:21.330 - 01:10:36.979

the house, the house you still live in, yeah, yeah, yeah, so, so August they finished the background check. Had you had, did you like spend any time, you know, surveilling Delaware by that time? Did you come down and I watched, well, and I was trying to

01:10:36.979 - 01:10:49.899

set up a meeting to talk with Peter, but he was he was in court all and you're talking about Peter Walsh, Peter Walsh all the time, so I didn't have that opportunity to introduce myself, but I snuck in and sat in the back of his courtroom

01:10:49.899 - 01:11:04.140

for many a day. And it just convinced me I had no idea what I was doing in this job. How could I have thought I would be able to do this? So it was, it was scary. It was very intimidating, but you, Pauline, gave me the

01:11:04.140 - 01:11:23.560

best advice ever. Yes, I told you I, I don't think I could do this. This is, these are huge cases and you said. Ignore the numbers or better yet subtract 6 digits from those numbers and you'll realize that the issues are really the same. Someone probably

01:11:23.560 - 01:11:39.729

told me that, yeah, because I had the same intimidation. Is there gonna be a sale of a business? Are you gonna reject a lease all the same bankruptcy issues you've seen. You weren't quite right on that, however, Pauline, because in Delaware there really are cutting

01:11:39.729 - 01:11:58.720

edge bankruptcy issues, because of the money involved, the attorneys are able to present really interesting issues. But I'll have to say the job is exhilarating. Attorneys are top notch. Everything is well briefed. I really have learned a lot of time, lot, lot of,

01:11:58.810 - 01:12:14.549

things since my first day. Do you remember your first day on the job? Oh my God, yes. So what happened? Well, first, let me tell you about the induction ceremony. Oh, yes please. Yeah I told you at the end of September this is September 9th

01:12:14.549 - 01:12:31.640

'98. I had done nothing to prepare for the induction ceremony. Carolyn Raniszewski ordered the cater. She sent out the invitations. She was the clerk of the court. She was the clerk of the court at the time. She arranged for the court reporter. She told me exactly

01:12:31.640 - 01:12:50.049

what I was supposed to do, how it was like, you know, she planned my wedding, by planning the ceremony, and. It was really amazing though. My family came down from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. And they really were impressed. They filled up a lot of pews. That's

01:12:50.049 - 01:13:07.209

a big family. Yes, we took up a lot of space, but the best part for my nephews was that the US marshals escorted us from this building across the street, stopping traffic for us and marched us into the courtroom. Was it Judge Farnan's courtroom? It was

01:13:07.209 - 01:13:24.560

Judge Farnan's courtroom. Yes, yes, and all the judges were up on the bench and they had a big ceremony. It, it was really and who did you have on your, you had some speakers. I did. I asked my college roommate Cosmo, who played basketball with

01:13:24.560 - 01:13:42.720

me, Ed Toole, my former mentor, and, and Father Sullivan, the priest from Wellsboro, came down and said if you just said the, invocation, so it was really recall he was funny he's very funny. He's very, oh yeah, he had to ask the judges, is it

01:13:42.720 - 01:14:00.299

OK if I mention God here? And all the judges were Irish Catholics, so, oh yeah, go ahead. So it was very funny. That was your first introduction to a lot of the Delaware bar. I didn't know anybody and it was really overwhelming. But it

01:14:00.299 - 01:14:17.850

was great that I had my family with me, it was really good and then. The next day I got thrown into it. My first hearing was the first day. Yeah, 10 a.m. and binders delivered to you at your induction party at the hotel next

01:14:17.850 - 01:14:30.259

door, yeah, the hotel, OK, yes, so, I was up all night reading them and, and was it, I, you had a, did you have a first day hearing on your first day, first day you had a brand new case assigned to you. Peter was

01:14:30.259 - 01:14:45.450

so glad I was there. Do you remember the name of the case? I have no idea. It might have been Smart Talk. OK. That was one of my early cases. And I went in and I felt you know it might have been international wireless. It

01:14:45.450 - 01:15:00.450

might have been International Wireless. I think it, I said we represented the the company and I think, I think we delivered the binders to you while you were at the party. Thank you. That's what we did back then, we, of course, yes, yeah, nothing was,

01:15:00.520 - 01:15:18.399

no electronic filing back then, right? No, nobody had a computer barely, yeah, so, yeah, I read them all night. I remember and then, came in and the funniest thing about the hearing is that I, you know, had to pay attention and listen and

01:15:18.399 - 01:15:36.129

then there was an issue I actually had to decide. There had been some objection oral objection. So I said, all right, well, I think I've heard enough. I'm ready to decide and everybody sat down and picked up their pen to start writing my decision. I

01:15:36.129 - 01:15:54.580

thought, holy crap. This is, this is really significant. I better get it right, and then I made my ruling. And then there was an awkward minute. Where I realized to myself, how the heck do I get out of here? How do I end the hearing? How

01:15:54.580 - 01:16:07.830

do I end the hearing? And I hadn't paid attention to that part of it when I watched Peter Walsh, so I just blurted out, OK, we'll stand adjourned, and I got up and ran out of the courtroom. So now I have to say that every time

01:16:07.830 - 01:16:24.979

because that's what I apparently thought it was but it wasn't too stupid so that wasn't your only hearing that day, right? You have oh no I had 5 or 6 more. That's amazing yeah and did you totally feel overwhelmed? Yeah, it's very I did not

01:16:24.979 - 01:16:38.529

realize I told you by the end of my career as a lawyer I really love doing trial work. I never realized how much harder it was to be the judge in a trial because when I was a lawyer I already knew what the facts were. I

01:16:38.529 - 01:16:51.250

knew what my client was gonna my witness was gonna say I knew what the other side was gonna argue the judge knows none of that except for the binders that you get to give you a hint of what the arguments are gonna be, but you certainly

01:16:51.250 - 01:17:11.290

don't know what the witnesses are gonna say, so active listening. It is exhausting. You have to listen to every single thing. Did you have a law clerk? And yes, I did have a law clerk, and he was terrific. He had, he was a student at Pitt.

01:17:12.209 - 01:17:26.990

With Katherine Height was this professor. She had been a lawyer at Dwayne Morris in Philadelphia, and I knew her well, so I was able to get a law clerk to start right away, and he. Really stayed with me for a full year. He wasn't going

01:17:26.990 - 01:17:38.720

to. He was gonna do a half a year, but he ended up staying for a year. He was great. He was that was it. It was basically you and a clerk, me and a clerk, but he was the best clerk because. You know, I'd make these

01:17:38.720 - 01:17:52.419

decisions and I come off and say I'm gonna be, you know. Thrown out of Delaware, I just decided an issue that they all think I shouldn't, you know, have decided that way, and he would come out and say you were right. They didn't follow the procedures

01:17:52.419 - 01:18:07.970

and you were right. He was very, very well, you're always gonna make someone upset, right when you make a ruling, so. Well this particular case I had made the committee and the debtor and the stalking horse all upset. That's not good, not good. By telling the

01:18:07.970 - 01:18:21.790

stalking horse that there were objections to the bid procedures. And I said, well, the objectors are right. There are some things that need to be changed to make it fair, so I made my ruling and the stalking horse said, well, we're not going to do

01:18:21.790 - 01:18:39.589

that. And if you won't go along with our procedures I'm leaving and we're withdrawing our bid and I said well I think you probably have to do that because if I did what you asked I couldn't find that you were a good faith bidder because I've

01:18:39.589 - 01:18:54.669

just told you that the procedures are unfair. Well, he made a big show of putting his stuff in his briefcase and storming out of the room and then I turned to the debtor and I said, OK, should we go on to the next matter on the

01:18:54.669 - 01:19:09.799

agenda? And she said, no, Judge, you've just screwed up my whole case we don't have a buyer. The company's gonna fail. Nobody's gonna get paid a dime in this case, and it's all your fault. They didn't say that last part, did they? Well, they kind of

01:19:09.799 - 01:19:24.870

did. Wow. And this is your first couple of months on the job. This is, yeah, like, you know, my first 2nd week or something, and we think you ought to reconsider. And I thought about it for one second. Not just at the audacity of him saying

01:19:24.870 - 01:19:43.229

that, I said, you know what. I'm not gonna reconsider. And I appreciate that you and the committee both think that I have ruined your case. But my job is not to make sure your case succeeds. My job is to be sure that the rules are followed.

01:19:44.220 - 01:20:00.479

And the next time you're in this court, you may be on the other side. And you'll know that I will enforce the rules. And that's my only job here. So did the stalking horse come back? Yes, the next day, of course, of course. So the

01:20:00.479 - 01:20:16.149

case was not ruined. It was not ruined and there were two other bidders who were in the wings. It wasn't really like I ruined their case, right? Everything seems more dramatic when you're in the moment though, but I also felt, you know, nobody knew me. And

01:20:16.149 - 01:20:27.669

I felt that they were testing me to see how far they could get away with. I wondered about that. Did you did so you felt that from the bench? I felt that I felt people really and Peter was great though. You talked to him about it.

01:20:27.790 - 01:20:43.129

I went off the bench and I went down to Peter in the rare moment when he wasn't on the bench and explained it all to him and he said, good for you, absolutely. That is not the Delaware way. We don't do what everybody wants us to

01:20:43.129 - 01:20:59.169

do. Our job is to enforce the rules and the procedures so everybody knows they have a, you know, a fair judge. He was very good. He was very ethical. That was the number one attribute, of him that I really appreciated. You could always count on

01:20:59.169 - 01:21:12.830

him. And he, he worked so hard too, so I'm sure he navigated a lot of things before you, but he was not a big talker, so I didn't know if you got much mentoring from him. He was, did you? It was, yes, I, but,

01:21:12.939 - 01:21:26.899

he would never come down to my office. I always had to go to his office, which was fine because I was the one with the questions, but he also would never invite me to lunch. Because he was very he well he did, but he was very

01:21:26.899 - 01:21:40.959

old school. And I think he hesitated to invite anytime I invited him to lunch because I was a woman I would invite him to lunch. I didn't even think of it, you know, we were going out in public to have lunch, and to talk about

01:21:40.959 - 01:21:56.970

cases and yeah, he answered all my questions. He was. Very, very good about that. So the jurisdiction was going crazy at that time, right? I mean, the busiest in the country, correct? I believe it was we had us in Delaware and New York, right? We were

01:21:57.220 - 01:22:20.319

double what New York was. We had enough cases to justify 18 judges when I started. And we had 2. And there were 9 judges in New York and they were justifying there. So we had hearings scheduled all day. We had to read the binders into

01:22:20.319 - 01:22:35.770

the evening as late as it went, we had to bring binders home and read them. You'll appreciate this. I never, I rarely got lunch. I had to bring in granola bars just to, you know, not starve, or send Nicole down to take a 5

01:22:35.770 - 01:22:49.729

minute break and eat your lunch. Exactly, exactly, the poor practitioners got no lunch either. Hey, you know, if they talked less they could get lunch, but it wasn't unusual for you to be on the bench like at 8 o'clock at night, right? Not at all, yeah.

01:22:51.120 - 01:23:05.149

Not at all. And Judge Walsh too, who was, you know, older than you, so yeah, you guys were working really hard. So how did, and, and you had no electronic filing, so you had literally binders of things to read. And you should have seen I would

01:23:05.149 - 01:23:26.160

handwrite issues on the agenda letter and on the pleadings and I put yellow stickers in the binder for where I had to reference. Once we got electronic I could take notes and I could make an outline of what the arguments were but both Peter and I

01:23:26.870 - 01:23:45.509

always try to read every single thing in the case before we went on the bench of course there were the late objections. The late revised orders, but we really tried to read everything. You mentioned the agenda letter at the time we had no we actually sent

01:23:45.509 - 01:23:58.759

the court a letter, right? There were no local rules, is that right? Yes, yeah, and that was different than Philly, correct? Oh, much different, yeah, much different. I don't even know how they did it in Philadelphia. There were not that many. Oh, I know how they

01:23:58.759 - 01:24:15.100

had they had a motion day and a Chapter 11 day. So if you had any motion in any case, you could just get it listed on that day, Wednesdays I think it was and but each case would have one motion right here I get here and

01:24:15.100 - 01:24:30.299

you know I think, OK, I'm gonna have a hearing. Well here every day is chapter 11 day yeah, every day is chapter 11 day and then oh I have a hearing in you know Smart Talk. First motion is whatever. Well, OK, that's, that'll take an hour

01:24:30.299 - 01:24:46.000

and then I look and there are 20 other motions. I'm like, oh my gosh, how are we gonna fit this in in one hour? Of course, we couldn't. And one thing I had to change, was that at the time Laurie Capp, my courtroom deputy, sat

01:24:46.000 - 01:25:04.580

in court with me. So she could keep track of what orders I had to sign, OK. Well, she had 2 young children. And we were there till 10 o'clock. plus if she was sitting in court, she was not returning the 300 phone calls that she got

01:25:04.580 - 01:25:21.629

that day for scheduling matters. So we ended up agreeing you stay out of the courtroom. I will try and make a list of the orders that I have to sign. So how long did this go on with you just having, you know, a one clerk

01:25:21.629 - 01:25:50.299

and no help. Forever. I'm trying to think when they. Maybe maybe. 2003, 2004, the administrative office agreed the administrative office of the judiciary agreed that we could have we were entitled to 18 judges. There was no way Congress was gonna give us

01:25:50.299 - 01:26:07.419

18 judges so we could have we could have literally had 18 law clerks, but Peter said I can't even keep up with one law clerk who's writing opinions for me. I agreed to take, I think at one point I had 6 law clerks. Because I could

01:26:07.419 - 01:26:22.979

get them to review the fee applications and objections to claims and small matters, and they could get me a bench memo and I could decide that pretty easily. We were also able to use law clerks of other judges from all over the country who had extra

01:26:22.979 - 01:26:39.899

time on their hands. I was able, for example, to get a law clerk who had gone to Tulane Law School to help me draft an opinion regarding Louisiana civil law, which I knew nothing about. So that was a great help. I also, of course, got great

01:26:39.899 - 01:26:59.870

help from Laurie Capp who handled all the scheduling and made sure that the orders I signed got docketed and the paper kept flowing. And of course I've had two great judicial assistants throughout my career, Nicole Archie and Kathy Farrell. They both came from Clark Ladner

01:26:59.870 - 01:27:14.839

and I knew them very well and so I could trust them to handle some very sensitive matters, but it was crazy. It really was the one thing that I recall being different between Philly and here is there's not a lot of testimony

01:27:14.839 - 01:27:29.560

for the motions and like oftentimes if it's uncontested you could rule quickly, right? Or, people would submit an affidavit or declaration or something, yeah. And how did you deal with that? Was that, I assume that was kind of a godsend given how much your workload

01:27:29.560 - 01:27:44.069

was. It was a godsend and, and really Laurie, another reason for her to stay back was she could gather all those certificates of no objection and call through them and, you know, when I got off the bench, I could just sign them but again it was

01:27:44.069 - 01:27:59.359

all written and it was. It was all paper. It was really crazy. So did you feel overwhelmed or did you feel like it was fun or maybe both? I don't know. I think I felt overwhelmed, completely overwhelmed for 3 or 4 years, like a truck had

01:27:59.359 - 01:28:19.029

run over me. Yeah, it was crazy and really I had, we had to. First, get some local rules set. And when right after I got appointed, I was told by the Third Circuit that one of the problems in Delaware is there are no

01:28:19.029 - 01:28:40.100

local rules and therefore, nobody knows what the procedure is. There are some. You know, local orders, but you know, anybody outside of Delaware does not know about them. And in addition it was so busy that anybody outside of Delaware, who was not intimately involved in the

01:28:40.100 - 01:28:55.819

case, could not get any answers to the question of what's going on in this case. Because debtor's council were overwhelmed, they couldn't return phone calls. Creditors committee counsel couldn't even return phone calls from creditors saying what's going on? What should I do about is my lease

01:28:55.819 - 01:29:13.339

being assumed or rejected? They could not get basic information and the docket was not electronic. Nobody could access it. You'd have to send somebody down here to look at the docket. It was unmanageable. And nobody knew what the rules were. How do you get a

01:29:13.339 - 01:29:34.580

matter listed for hearing even. The courtroom deputies were too busy really to answer 300 calls a day. So, I did what the circuit said. I formed a local committee of the bar. And we did. We were able to gather comments. We took all

01:29:34.580 - 01:29:47.700

the, you know, standing orders. We turned them into local rules, and I'll have to say the bar really chipped in. They really did a great job with that. Are you still on the local rules committee or have you passed that baton on? I've passed that

01:29:47.700 - 01:30:06.160

baton on to Karen Owens, but I mean we did it, it first came out February 2001, so we did it in two years. And then it was amended almost yearly after that. But did that help you much or not? I mean, it helped a lot. It helped

01:30:06.160 - 01:30:27.549

the outside people to know how to get a motion filed and docketed and scheduled for a hearing, much fewer calls. That was, that was very good and it really put some order into, and we also, I think had a procedure that. This

01:30:27.549 - 01:30:44.399

was not in the local rules, but the the law firms were supposed to designate a paralegal, so if anybody wanted that agenda. They just this was the paralegal to talk to on that case. So, whether it was the debtors or the creditors committee, attorneys

01:30:44.399 - 01:30:59.270

debtors, was it the debtors, yeah, so you, you said you felt like people were testing you. Did you like, do you remember how long it took for you to feel like you were comfortable in your position? Maybe after a couple of years I felt

01:30:59.270 - 01:31:17.229

like I started seeing the same issues. I started, you know, remembering what something was about, but it did take, it took a couple of years because it was so busy. It really wasn't until we got help. And by help at that time it was

01:31:17.229 - 01:31:34.560

the district court that first stepped in to help, right? First stepped in to help because they saw we were overwhelmed, so they agreed that they would take bankruptcy cases. Some of them loved the bankruptcy cases and did very well, but some of them hated it. I

01:31:34.560 - 01:31:48.839

remember getting complaints from the district court judges who didn't like it, like, who do they think they are? They think they're entitled to a hearing on every single motion. That's not right and I had to say, yeah, well, the local rules and the national rules say

01:31:48.839 - 01:32:05.470

they're entitled to a hearing on every single motion filed. It's completely unlike the cases that they have. They have a lot of pretrial discovery and stuff, and then they have a big trial. Ours is, it's an emergency hearing every single week in some of these cases,

01:32:06.029 - 01:32:22.649

and they were none of those judges were had bankruptcy experience, right? None of them had bankruptcy experience, yeah, so, but from your perspective, I assume it was a welcome. It took some of the pressure off, but. Again, not all of them liked it and so

01:32:22.649 - 01:32:38.529

not all, all of them took bankruptcy cases. Oh, so they could decide whether they would take it or not. OK, it wasn't like a wheel. No, OK, no, no. The chief basically assigned and asked people if they wanted it and so it was not and

01:32:38.529 - 01:32:52.160

then they and that was Judge Farnan at the time Judge Farnan at the time he was actually he liked bankruptcy he really enjoyed it, yeah, and he was good, yeah, he had some very tough cases and he did a great job with them, but yeah,

01:32:52.240 - 01:33:09.439

then they decided they weren't going to take them anymore and one of the problems was we got no notice. When we found that the the only way we found that the reference was withdrawn was when an order landed on our desk that was both in both

01:33:09.439 - 01:33:26.520

directions both directions. Then when we found out that they had reinstated the reference and we were getting all cases that landed on our desk. Did they at least keep the ones that they had? Some did, some did not. So it was very, very disruptive and that

01:33:26.520 - 01:33:43.779

just could not go on, and Peter and I could not do everything. And then we got the visiting judges. OK, so yeah, tell us about that. So what was that your idea or yours and Peter's? It was Peter. Peter was the

01:33:43.779 - 01:33:56.709

chief at the time, and Peter, since he had been on the bench, he was on the bench since '93, I think, so he was on five years before me. He had made a lot of contacts with other bankruptcy judges around the country because we have to

01:33:56.709 - 01:34:13.259

go to judges training every year and he wasn't involved in the NCBJ, but he was. He was involved in other things and so he met perhaps because he had practiced so long he knew a lot of the other judges and he knew them from his

01:34:13.259 - 01:34:33.910

baby judges class from the initial training and so he would call and talk to other judges and then he decided, you know, these judges can do it we need help and they're all slow in some of their districts so he got permission from the circuit. To

01:34:33.910 - 01:34:54.490

allow us first to get judges within the circuit. And Judy Wizmur volunteered. Ray Lyons volunteered. Kevin Carey volunteered, um, so these are other jurisdictions in PA in New Jersey, yes, and they came to Delaware one week a month to handle cases, and the two of us

01:34:54.490 - 01:35:11.750

decided that the number one disrupter of our calendar was new cases, so we put them on the wheel. And it was great from our workload, but it was also great from recruiting perspective because other visiting judges in other districts if you go to be a visiting

01:35:11.750 - 01:35:32.109

judge in another district, you're just going to handle the crappy cases or adversary cases. And judges found out if you go to be a visiting judge in Delaware, you might get KB Toys for example. Were they excited about coming? They were thrilled to come, thrilled

01:35:32.109 - 01:35:50.330

to come. So we got, we got some very good judges. We got Chuck Case, we got Ron Barliant, we got Louis Kornreich, judges who were very well respected in their respective districts, and they came here for a week every month for a year. So it

01:35:50.330 - 01:36:06.569

really helped us out and how did you decide who which judges would or did they just kind of contact you and said we're interested? How did it work? We got some contact and when we checked their background, there were some who were not invited, and there

01:36:06.569 - 01:36:19.959

were others that we got good reviews from and they showed up and sometimes they turned out to be terrific. I occasionally we had a mistake, but. So did you have to feel like you had to do hand holding with them or were they kind of

01:36:19.959 - 01:36:36.910

just self-sufficient? They did they were on their own and at that time David Byrd was the law clerk, excuse me, the clerk of court, and he was fabulous. He arranged for staff for them. He arranged for law clerks for them. He arranged for space for them

01:36:36.910 - 01:36:55.850

initially we had the 3rd floor. Which used to be the 341 meeting room that we use as a courtroom and then he got money. I don't know how he got money from the administrative office and built out two floors, six courtrooms when we had two

01:36:55.850 - 01:37:13.419

judges. And no prospect of getting more judges at that point in time, so he built these out and we were able to house the judges and they each had the. All 4 judges that would come each month had the same courtroom deputy.

01:37:14.149 - 01:37:30.870

The same law clerk, so she was quite overwhelmed. She was writing all their opinions, but she was terrific, and occasionally they would use their law clerk back back home to write an opinion. So David Byrd was really like the intermediary. You didn't have to

01:37:31.399 - 01:37:45.959

do as much as he did. There were some judge things that we had to deal with. There were some touchy things sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't, and we had to adjust, as I recall, they were, they were all over the place as

01:37:45.959 - 01:38:00.100

far as how they handled things. Did they ask you how things are done in Delaware? They just, some of them did and some of them did go along with that, and some of them had their own way and they weren't interested in what we did,

01:38:00.339 - 01:38:13.240

they listened and didn't do it that way, so it was from your perspective you didn't care, I assume. Well, at that point I was not gonna second guess them, you know, we were desperate for help. We were desperate for help. Exactly. Both Peter and I did

01:38:13.240 - 01:38:30.709

recognize that it was difficult for counsel to have to deal with different judges on their cases, but we were desperate for help. And both of us were also very happy to get some outside perspectives from those judges on how best to handle our cases. So overall,

01:38:30.750 - 01:38:49.339

I think it was a good program. So what did that mean you had like a more normal workload as far as could you like leave at 6 o'clock? No, but um. You know we had the equivalent of one additional judge so it did help it

01:38:49.339 - 01:39:07.640

did help and really it helped because we didn't have so many first days and we were able to handle our usual workload that reminds me you haven't talked much about consumer cases. Which can be very time consuming. Are there, were there a lot of those in

01:39:07.640 - 01:39:24.160

Delaware? There were none. There were some 13s and Judy Fitzgerald, you will remember, was a visiting judge here, and she handled all the 13s. She wanted to, yes, she did. Oh, perfect, yeah, yeah. So did you ever do a 13? Never. Well, when I was a

01:39:24.160 - 01:39:41.569

lawyer, I did one 13, but you never did one as a judge, not until I became the judge in the Virgin Islands. That's amazing, yeah, no. Thank God, thank God Brendan Shannon came on board later and said that he would handle the 13s because none of us

01:39:41.569 - 01:40:04.589

had really done any 13s. You did 7s and 11s, but no 13. And really our 7 workload, what we actually saw were all converted 11 corporations. We had very, very few Chapter 7 individual cases. Well, that's good, and thank goodness for Judge Fitzgerald, I guess,

01:40:04.680 - 01:40:19.990

because those can be well personally time consuming, the hearings can go very long with an individual case, so I don't know how you would squeeze that in. So at some point you find out you're getting new judges, but that was many years later, '05,

01:40:20.029 - 01:40:43.359

and really. Didn't we get CM/ECF before the new judges came on board because that was another big change, not just the local rules, but getting electronic filing was a huge aid not only to the court but to the lawyers and also to out of town

01:40:43.359 - 01:40:58.310

people and creditors who could simply go on an electronic docket and see what was happening in the case that might be affecting them. That was a huge change. So let me tell you what happened because it happened while I was the chief. I get stuck with

01:40:58.310 - 01:41:17.290

this. The administrative office for the judiciary announces that they're coming out with electronic filing, and they beta tested it in the Southern District of New York, OK? And we heard from the judges there that it was fabulous. And so I called up and said, you know, oh

01:41:17.290 - 01:41:30.919

no, then they sent out a list. The next, here's how we're gonna roll out electronic filing. The next 10 courts are this, and then the next 10 of this and Delaware's nowhere on the list. So I called them up and I said listen you know we

01:41:30.919 - 01:41:45.560

really need to be on that list. Was this just bankruptcy courts or? Just bankruptcy courts. Bankruptcy led the way on the electronic filing. We really need to be on the list. Well, we don't have you down and we're we're trying it in all different courts

01:41:45.560 - 01:41:59.970

just to see how it is. I said no. Southern District of New York has said it's fabulous. We have the same case load we really need it. And that, well, we'll think about it, and then I got David Byrd to put together all the statistics. That

01:41:59.970 - 01:42:18.890

we have all these cases we had. I mean hundreds of thousands of filings, paper filings coming into the clerk's office, we didn't have enough clerks to docket them. You will remember sometimes it took you 3 days to get an order that I signed on the

01:42:18.890 - 01:42:37.419

docket. That was just not acceptable. So a lot of people practicing now don't even, don't even know what it was like, but it was, it was very cumbersome, very cumbersome. It used to, it was so cumbersome that in court I was asked to sign two original

01:42:37.419 - 01:42:53.839

orders. So that I could hand it back to counsel in case the clerk's office lost the original and at first I was like I can't do that. No, you have to do that and after losing one or two orders in the morass of papers downstairs I

01:42:53.839 - 01:43:14.000

ended up doing that, but I kept pressing the AO and then one of our IT people came to me. And said, you know, there's a competitor. That has the same type. It was called racer instead of pacer, very clever, and it's the exact same concept

01:43:14.000 - 01:43:28.649

and it's electronic filing. And they will put it, they will install it here for free. Did you have the authority to do that? Well, so I went to the administrative office and I said I have a private vendor who will do this for free because they're

01:43:28.649 - 01:43:44.189

charging the lawyers, not the court. They will install it for free and they said you can't do that. That's a breach of our security. And they can't, you know, you'll have to, you know, you can't be tied into that. I said, OK, what if we

01:43:44.189 - 01:44:04.290

disconnect our computers from it, from, from the administrative office? They said, you can't do that. You know, we send important things like emails and stuff to you. I said, OK, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have one computer. That is a stand alone in its

01:44:04.290 - 01:44:20.689

own isolated place that is not connected to any of our computers and that will be how we communicate with the judiciary. All of our other computers were disconnected. They're like, well, we don't think you should do that. And then I got a call from the IT

01:44:20.689 - 01:44:35.229

security team. And then I got a call from the circuit IT committee, and I said no, we have to do this. You don't understand. We are and I did. Did you have technical assistance? I wouldn't even have our IT people did it. Oh yeah, no, but

01:44:35.229 - 01:44:48.189

I mean as far as even making your case to the circuit, or you just had, you had the stats. I said I had the stats. David Byrd had put together the whole package, and he put together the package about here's what they're gonna do and. And

01:44:48.189 - 01:45:02.490

so we did, we rolled it out, and I think you tell me, I think it lasted 3 or 4 months. I don't even remember it. It lasted 3 or 4 months and the administrative office came right in and installed CM/ECF. OK, well, so you got

01:45:02.490 - 01:45:15.459

your way. Well, I got my way and then did you make any enemies in the process or everything was all right? Everything was all right and actually all the lawyers were like, thank God, you know, and then they asked me to go to the district

01:45:15.459 - 01:45:29.419

court and convince the district court to get on CM/ECF and I went and talked to Sue Robinson. Absolutely not. She had no interest in that and so I went back. I think it was Tony Clark at Skadden, and I said, sorry, I did my best. You

01:45:29.419 - 01:45:45.919

guys are gonna have to. Come up with something else, but ultimately the administrative office rolled it out to all of the district courts as well. OK, so that made a huge improvement, but you still had the same crazy workload, but it made I found an immediate

01:45:45.919 - 01:46:06.049

improvement because now I could read everything online and I could take notes. On, you know, we're perfect. You didn't have to carry large binders home with you exactly. I had my laptop at home and I didn't have to, carry binders everywhere. It made a

01:46:06.049 - 01:46:18.640

huge difference for me and as you know, I mean with computers you can edit your notes. I mean before I was on the agenda and I'd write in blue and then I'd take a red pen and write the additions and then I'd take a black pen

01:46:18.640 - 01:46:31.319

and write, you know, the committee's argument. It was just cumbersome so this reminds me it has nothing to do with electronic filing, but what did you have a process for like writing your opinions like like lots of times you don't have time to write an

01:46:31.319 - 01:46:46.455

opinion, right? You have to, you have to go on the fly and make a decision. So how did you write, did you write notes down? Did you just. I always in preparing for a hearing, I always wrote an outline of each party's argument and then I

01:46:46.455 - 01:47:04.220

wrote a gut decision what I think probably is gonna be the decision before the hearing started, even, you know, and then I would listen and online I would be changing my gut decision because they'd answer a question that I had and then I'd be like, OK,

01:47:04.259 - 01:47:19.500

that makes a good point and so by the end of it I was usually able because I was a bankruptcy practitioner, I realized you wanted decisions sometimes you don't care if you win or lose, but you need to know what the answer is so you can

01:47:19.500 - 01:47:36.169

then go out and negotiate a plan based on that so I appreciated that we needed decisions right away. So most of my decisions by far were from the bench even in the early days. In the early days though, I did realize there were some issues

01:47:36.169 - 01:47:49.890

that I kept seeing and that I really needed to write an opinion about it so that the part the lawyers would know what my feeling was on this one issue, but you didn't write very, did you have time to write very many opinions and you ended

01:47:49.890 - 01:48:04.229

up writing a lot of opinions even before, even before you had helpers on the bench. And the law clerks really helped me. I thought it was great to have 6 law clerks. I had them writing opinions and writing and, and they would do nice bench memos

01:48:04.229 - 01:48:19.549

and then if I felt I had to write an opinion, I could easily turn that into a written opinion. They did a nice job early on. They really did. So electronic filing allowed you to just edit your own work more easily and yes, and be more

01:48:19.549 - 01:48:34.930

prepared. And yes to write opinions it was, it was a godsend yeah it really was. I mean, you remember the days when we were handwriting and I remember the days when I hand wrote some opinions. I've seen some of my handwriting in the opinion

01:48:35.490 - 01:48:49.520

no in the orders, not the opinions in the orders, yes, because people would do that. They'd write and then hand it up and you would sign it, yeah, yeah, some, some ruling you made, you know, they had to change things crazy it was crazy. So,

01:48:49.540 - 01:49:01.899

but, but all this time, I mean, I know you were worried at the beginning that you were the outsider and there were these big cases that you hadn't dealt with in Philly, but obviously the cases kept coming, they did keep coming. You had to have your

01:49:01.899 - 01:49:19.149

confidence had to be, you know, growing at this point. I have to laugh because I know I don't know what organization sends out things, the 20 best bankruptcy judges in the country. And I started showing up on that and I laughed. I went to Peter and

01:49:19.149 - 01:49:33.830

I said, Well, I think this is just an ad for Delaware. It doesn't have anything to do with how good I am, but they want to convince people to keep coming to Delaware, and he laughed. He said, Well, probably what they're doing with me, but I

01:49:33.830 - 01:49:49.509

didn't think of that, yeah, yeah, so obviously it was, it was, it was going well. It was but it was still too much. There wasn't even a lull. There was a little lull when we had the visiting judges. It started to taper off and I

01:49:49.509 - 01:50:02.990

think because of the uncertainty of knowing what the visiting judges would do and really not even knowing who was going to be a visiting judge next year, right? It would depend on who we could recruit now that the bar complain because we certainly complained behind your

01:50:02.990 - 01:50:24.089

backs, yes. But we ignored them. OK, yeah, there was no other choice. There really was not any other choice. We could, we, the two of us physically could not do it. And quite frankly we viewed dissatisfaction with the visiting judges program as an impetus

01:50:24.299 - 01:50:40.890

to get us new judges, OK? And the bar and our senators came through and we did get 4 new judges. So I'm trying to remember. So was it, was Chris Coons, or is that before his time? It was by Senator Biden. OK, that's what I thought,

01:50:41.029 - 01:50:59.910

yeah, OK, yeah. So that was in like you find out you're getting new judges finally and I know they took the bench in 2006, yeah, so yeah, we found out like you know they expedited their FBI check, so we might have found out

01:51:00.169 - 01:51:13.049

6 or 8 months before and one of them was Kevin Carey who you had a long history with a long history with him. I went to law school with him. He and I both were law clerks at the Eastern District of Pennsylvania bankruptcy court. He became

01:51:13.049 - 01:51:30.370

clerk of court. We then had cases against each other. He was the clerk of court while you were clerking for Goldhaber, yes, yes, that's funny, yes, and, we had cases. With and against each other throughout our career and funny, I told you that I

01:51:30.370 - 01:51:49.359

applied for this position because I was gonna apply in Philadelphia in 2000 and of course I had told Kevin that. I got this job and then in 2000 Kevin called me and said, Walrath, I'm thinking of applying for your judgeship in Philadelphia. What do you think?

01:51:49.770 - 01:52:06.790

And I said, go for it. It is the best job. So did you ever regret that you hadn't, you know, waited, yeah, and, and practiced and done it in Philly? Not one bit. Yeah, this is so much better, so much better, and Kevin Carey ended up

01:52:06.790 - 01:52:25.660

here too. I got him I called when he got on the bench. Again, I was recruiting judges to appear down here and I had called all of the bankruptcy judges in Philadelphia and they all said, Walrath, why would I go down there? For the same amount

01:52:25.660 - 01:52:42.490

of money and work 3 times as hard. As just sitting here it's a fair question, right? It's not a fair question. They're bored up there. They had no work to do. They didn't have the exciting cases. Kevin is the only one who thought I was right, and

01:52:42.490 - 01:52:59.009

he came down here and he loved it. And he basically told me. You know, I'm too good to be a judge of Philadelphia, and I said I agree with you and everybody down here so you better apply when the new judges get here and so

01:52:59.009 - 01:53:15.419

he was he was one of the new ones and then. Brendan Shannon, your partner, Kevin Gross and Chris Sontchi. Kevin Gross, who was known as the nicest lawyer in Delaware, became one of your colleagues on the our loss was your gain, it was, yeah. So

01:53:15.419 - 01:53:36.609

how, how did that work with, I mean, I'm sure you were excited. Oh, so excited. Yeah, I'll tell a behind the scenes story that maybe I shouldn't. But when the circuit, when we got the authorization for 4, the committee interviewed sent up names to the

01:53:36.609 - 01:53:55.810

circuit. The circuit got a letter from the district court telling them only to appoint two judges here, not the 4. Because we really didn't need it. Wait, I'm sorry, who thought that the district court of Delaware. Oh my goodness. I know and I got a

01:53:55.810 - 01:54:12.790

call from Circuit executive to advise me of this letter because we had not been CC'd on it. Also rude and I was like, holy smokes, wait a minute. I said, let, can we respond to this before you even consider it? She goes, no, we're not considering

01:54:12.790 - 01:54:29.740

it. Oh we're ignoring it. OK, good. So they did appoint the 4. They say we have seen the numbers. We know your case load. You need 4 judges. Congress approved it. And we will. Why would they do such a thing? I don't know. OK, well, I'm

01:54:29.740 - 01:54:47.600

glad it was not considered, yeah, yeah, yeah. So and it was terrific. All 4 of them were terrific. It was an immediate relief. That was the first time. That was the first time I felt like I had a life. I felt like I wasn't working all

01:54:47.600 - 01:55:08.930

night preparing for the next day after a full day of hearings. It was just, it was tremendous. But you kept busy doing other things then, yes, yes, you started to become a joiner. I joined way too much. I really did, but, but they

01:55:08.930 - 01:55:25.620

were all professional things. Yeah, I found like, well, for example, Tom Ambro. He was very involved in the American Inns of Court, and he thought we ought to have a Bankruptcy Inns of Court. Was he on the bench then or at Richards Layton? I think he

01:55:25.620 - 01:55:40.410

was already on the bench. I think he was on the bench at that point. Yes, I think you're right or right first we joined the American Inns of Court that was the general one and that was excruciating, but I stuck with it and then he said

01:55:40.410 - 01:55:59.200

we really need a Bankruptcy Inns of Court, so he and I got the bar together and found it and I think it's terrific. It really the purpose of it is to help the younger lawyers. Get experience making arguments, writing arguments, but also for them to get

01:55:59.200 - 01:56:17.870

exposure to other lawyers in town in a social setting. You know, really, honestly they may not like their firm they may wanna go somewhere or they may wanna do more networking with other people. It was, it was a great, I think a great experience

01:56:18.089 - 01:56:33.200

and I continued. I still go to the meetings even though I persuaded Karen. Karen Owens was involved with it when she was a lawyer. She was heavily involved, I think she was the secretary at one point, so she was happy to take my place,

01:56:33.609 - 01:56:48.490

so yeah. It's a great organization. I also got involved. I went and talked on, you know, you start getting the invitations to speak it's a Delaware judge on the panel, right? Exactly. And I said yes because I like to travel, so I talked at the

01:56:48.490 - 01:57:10.069

TMA. I talked at AIRA. I talked at the New York Institute of Credit. I work. ABI even there did you enjoy you enjoy speaking on panels I enjoyed speaking yeah. Yeah, and really just talking to people afterwards, getting different points of view, yeah. And I'm a

01:57:10.069 - 01:57:26.029

nerd. I stayed for the other CLE just to hear what other people had to say, so I really did enjoy that. I also got the chance to teach at Saint John's Law School and the master's in bankruptcy program. I really enjoyed teaching young attorneys and law

01:57:26.029 - 01:57:45.740

students about the bankruptcy system. I also had the opportunity to serve as an editor for both the national bankruptcy guide put out by Thomson Reuters and by the American Bankruptcy Law Journal, which is the only law review that is edited by bankruptcy judges and not law

01:57:45.740 - 01:58:03.350

students. I have really enjoyed the opportunities I have been given to teach, write, and contribute to the advancement of the bankruptcy system. I am happy to say now that with the addition of our newer judges I have now been able to step back from those activities

01:58:03.680 - 01:58:23.250

and to let the new judges have those opportunities to show how good they are. And I got involved in NCBJ, which is our National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, which some would call our bankruptcy Judges union, but really it's a more of a social and educational

01:58:23.250 - 01:58:44.430

group that tries to advance bankruptcy law. You got really involved I got really involved. I did everything. Again, Judy Fitzgerald got me involved and not just speaking, I ended up being the chairman of the Education Committee, which was a huge, huge job.

01:58:44.520 - 01:59:05.470

I was on the board of governors. I was on special committees on venue reform, on cost containment, which translates to bankruptcy clerks of court offices being taken over by district court clerks of court. So I got involved in controversial issues and writing papers. I edited

01:59:05.470 - 01:59:21.609

the American Bankruptcy Law Journal, was the business manager for that and ended up becoming president of the organization of the NCBJ, so that was a 1 year term or two. It was a 1 year term, but oh my gosh. It was, yeah, that's a lot

01:59:21.609 - 01:59:41.560

of work. It was a lot of work and there's so much and I had even as I was, you know, the president elect for that year, I had no idea of the scope of the issues that I would face. Such as? You're talking about substantive bankruptcy

01:59:41.560 - 01:59:59.640

substantive bankruptcy issues that affected the, the judges like venue and like, you know, the clerk's offices and. So were you, I don't know how to put this, venue is a tough issue. Did you feel like people were jealous of you because you were from

01:59:59.640 - 02:00:25.399

Delaware? Initially, but not, not really, there were some who were. There were others who recognized and we put together a committee to study it and got professors and got bankruptcy judges from all walks of life to go through and lay out the position on both

02:00:25.399 - 02:00:44.879

sides and it was ultimately decided that the NCBJ should not take a position. This is not something that is black and white. I agreed with it. Just don't take a position. People can argue and in fact I supported the side that really wanted venue

02:00:44.879 - 02:01:00.810

report venue reform as they called it. Put together a letter to be signed by bankruptcy judges and called me just to let me know and I said, well, I appreciate you should do that. That's your position and if you want to write that

02:01:00.810 - 02:01:15.509

letter, absolutely. He goes, well, cause I called one of your colleagues in the Southern District of New York and I got an earful. I said, listen, I'm not gonna tell you that there's only one side of this issue. There isn't. So just to set the scene

02:01:15.509 - 02:01:32.270

for someone who might not know when they watch this, this little movie we're making at some point, but there were law professors that were writing, you know, very long scholarly articles basically suggesting that you and Peter Walsh were corrupt, were corrupt, basically that you

02:01:32.270 - 02:01:50.870

would decide anything that lawyers wanted us to decide just for the purpose of getting more cases even though you had plenty. How did you guys feel about that? Well first we laughed at it because we did not want any more cases. We had double, triple, quadruple the cases

02:01:50.870 - 02:02:09.959

we could handle. And it was also offensive because both of us, I told you the one characteristic of Peter Walsh is his sense of morality and ethics and to suggest that we were corrupt in any decision we made when we were just trying to come

02:02:09.959 - 02:02:25.390

to the correct decision. Regardless of who the people were, once you're a judge, you don't think about, oh, I'm always gonna decide for the debtors or the creditors. You try to figure out what the correct answer is we don't have a client telling us what to

02:02:25.390 - 02:02:41.979

do. And really we got no more money for having the most cases in the country. You're lucky you have to work till 10 o'clock at night exactly, so was there and there's no avenue for you to respond really, right? Correct. And we've always,

02:02:42.060 - 02:02:57.259

and I agree with Peter, we've always taken the position we will not make any public comment. First of all, it's unethical to make a public comment about a pending case, even if it's not a case pending before you. I cannot publicly comment on a case that

02:02:57.259 - 02:03:15.930

is pending before the Supreme Court on any issue. That's just part of our judicial code. So we couldn't comment and even generically, we would always tell David Byrd, just do not, just, if they want statistics, if they want numbers. The clerk's office can provide

02:03:15.930 - 02:03:29.720

it, but we're not gonna comment on any pending case or on any call you for comment all the time they did. Oh yeah. Oh, it'll be deep background. No, I'm not gonna talk to you now. The bar, the Delaware bankruptcy bar, we were offended on your

02:03:29.720 - 02:03:43.700

behalf and, and you know, because we knew it was not true, but eventually we found other law review professors I'm sorry, other law professors who are willing to, to make our point, they didn't consult you either, I assume they just did it on their

02:03:43.700 - 02:04:03.399

own. OK, so you were basically hands off the whole controversy and it eventually died when I don't, and I maybe the white paper that was issued by the NCBJ allowed it to die because there were good arguments on both sides and they laid it out

02:04:03.399 - 02:04:21.589

I think very fairly yeah. And the NCBJ decided that it affected all judges differently and we were not gonna take a position. So I think that was a good result. But also my did it, was it in the back of your mind though when you

02:04:21.589 - 02:04:40.779

were making decisions or you just divorced, you just ignored it? Never OK, never. And I assume Peter was the same way, same way, yeah, that's good, OK. In fact, I think that the statistics showed that when somebody actually filed a motion to transfer venue,

02:04:41.109 - 02:04:55.850

we granted most of them. Right, you know, because they'd make it an argument that it doesn't belong here and there was a, there's a standard and you apply it and we transferred it and then the statute was changed to say that we could sua sponte

02:04:55.850 - 02:05:14.299

do it. And I think we each did at least one sua sponte order transferring venue because it doesn't belong here. Sometimes lawyers were creative in getting venue here, right? Yes, they were, and it didn't really belong here. I remember, I remember one lawyer making an

02:05:14.299 - 02:05:30.790

argument that a case in Maine, I think it was the railroad case in Maine where they had the accident and they filed it here. I think that's the case, but it was a big main case had no connection to Delaware other than it was incorporated

02:05:30.790 - 02:05:50.870

here and his argument was that this is a big case. And the Maine judges just are not capable of deciding the issues that need to be decided in this case and therefore it really belongs in Delaware. And at the end of the argument, I said, well,

02:05:51.040 - 02:06:09.299

I heard this argument. I said and obviously I don't agree with it because one of the Maine judges is Louis Kornreich and he served as a visiting judge here for many years and he was excellent and he is aware of the issues that come up in

02:06:09.299 - 02:06:25.029

these big cases and can handle them. In fact, he's gonna be handling this case so because I'm signing the order sending it right back to Maine. So yeah, it was can't blame a lawyer for pushing the envelope every now and then, right? Oh well, you can't blame them,

02:06:25.069 - 02:06:39.810

but you don't go along with it. Well that that is your prerogative as a judge and some and some lawyers recognize when they're pushing the envelope. I had one prominent lawyer where he made this argument and I said, you know, that is a very interesting argument.

02:06:40.089 - 02:07:00.140

I have never heard that argument before. Are there any cases that have adopted your argument? And he paused and said, no, Judge, you'll be the first. I was thinking, no, I will not be. But yeah, so I'm gonna take a little detour you mentioned

02:07:00.140 - 02:07:14.140

that you like to travel, so you signed up for a lot of these things so you could go some nice places. Excuse me. I thought one interesting thing about your career is that you've spent so much time in the Virgin Islands and you actually went

02:07:14.140 - 02:07:29.729

to Qatar to help them form some kind of bankruptcy statute. Can you talk about both of those a little bit? Sure, sure. You know, it's one of these my my whole career has been. You know, great good fortune, and one of the great good fortunes

02:07:29.729 - 02:07:46.879

I've had is that the Third Circuit appointed me after I finished my term as Chief Judge. The circuit appointed me as the bankruptcy judge for the Virgin Islands. Which, you know, they called and said, you know, would you like to do this? I was like, well,

02:07:47.410 - 02:08:02.700

yeah, but, you know, why me? But they said, oh yeah, we're gonna give it to you. So, I have to go down. I'm still doing it. I have to go down to the Virgin Islands every 3 or 4 months to hear cases. Somebody's got to

02:08:02.700 - 02:08:22.250

do it all, and I'll make the sacrifice, so that was great.That started in 2008 and at the time my husband and I were great sailors, loved sailing. We sailed on the Chesapeake Bay every summer, so I would go down and I would sit

02:08:22.250 - 02:08:35.129

for a week, and then Ed would come down at the end of the week and we'd go and charter a boat in the British Virgin Islands and have family come down and join us and we'd spend a week sailing there so. It was a fabulous

02:08:35.129 - 02:08:52.979

opportunity, but I've really, really gotten close with the people down there that it's just a wonderful court. I was just down there a couple of weeks ago. They are wonderful people, very welcoming, and I feel like those are the only cases that I have

02:08:52.979 - 02:09:11.790

that are consumer cases or small businesses. I get restaurants or boutiques that are failing. And I feel like I'm making a difference in people's lives by those cases. So Virgin Islands beautiful exotic location, and you and you're enjoying it, you're still enjoying it, yeah, yeah.

02:09:12.200 - 02:09:38.589

So what about Qatar which is completely on the opposite. I got an opportunity to go to Qatar through Judge Nancy Alquist, who also started at Clark Ladner. She has been very heavily involved in international programs to deal with bankruptcy and insolvency issues that

02:09:38.600 - 02:09:57.029

new republics are trying to deal with in third world countries that are trying to establish a commercial presence, and so she asked me to go we spent a week in Qatar, but how did you get invited to go by the government or how did that

02:09:57.029 - 02:10:20.620

yes by the government, and this was all through the commerce departments. A branch that's related to USAID. Oh yes, so I have recently communicated with some of the people that were involved in there that are still with the government, but the purpose

02:10:20.620 - 02:10:43.549

was to try and explain our bankruptcy laws, our commercial laws, not just bankruptcy securities and different laws that help establish really capitalism. And she has done that. I did it in Qatar for a week and that was an amazing experience with the judges and

02:10:43.549 - 02:11:03.689

the lawyers that were trying to understand so you were meeting with legislators or judges or? We were training the judges and discussing with them. They all of the judges actually were trained in Egypt, which has a civil law society they don't understand the

02:11:03.689 - 02:11:22.660

concept of common law, so we were trying to figure out how to meld the two legal systems to provide the best way they could come up with a system. Did they have any insolvency law at all? They did not and it was a problem

02:11:22.950 - 02:11:44.589

not because they wanted to reorganize debtors but because creditors could get no relief so and we did meet and talk with government officials also it was just a great experience. It was a whole week of work and meetings and training and exchange of ideas.

02:11:44.589 - 02:12:00.120

I didn't follow I was not part of the follow up team, but Nancy has done this in many different countries she did it in Afghanistan she did it in Ukraine, she did it in Bosnia, she did it in many countries and the

02:12:00.120 - 02:12:21.000

process is you go and do these training sessions and then you go back and work with the legislature to help them craft their laws many of the judges at the NCBJ have done this work. Mike Williamson did Rich Leonard, many, many judges have been out

02:12:21.000 - 02:12:40.810

in different parts of the world trying to work on different and some as simple as writing a constitution for the country it's just very rewarding work I really enjoyed it but I didn't have the time, of course not but to spend the other

02:12:40.810 - 02:12:58.299

judges came, yeah, yeah, to spend doing that, but let me go back to one thing that I forgot to mention when we were overloaded and we had visiting judges coming. Two of the visiting judges didn't want to handle chapter 11 cases. They did not want

02:12:58.299 - 02:13:13.500

to be on the wheel, but they agreed that they would do the adversaries. And you will remember John Akard, I do remember him and Paul Lindsey from Texas, right, from Texas. I don't remember Lindsey as much. He was from Oklahoma. And the two of them basically

02:13:13.500 - 02:13:29.899

said the same thing. We'll strap on our 6 gun and we'll get these cases handled for you. At the time, Peter and I were the only two judges, and we had 25,000 adversary proceedings pending. And we did not have time to even have a status

02:13:29.899 - 02:13:49.419

hearing in them and they just languished, and it was just unacceptable so the two of them came and started having status hearings and scheduling trials and in the meantime we talked to the administrative office who told us that we really ought to consider a

02:13:49.419 - 02:14:07.049

mediation program to get rid of these that had been successful elsewhere. So we set up a meeting here in Delaware and Liz Perris from Oregon came and Cecelia Morris from New York Southern District of New York came down and talked about the mediation programs they had

02:14:07.049 - 02:14:21.160

set up in their courts and we talked about it and they said, you know, we, we have a voluntary and it's, it's OK but it doesn't capture all the cases and we said well why don't we make it mandatory and they're like, well, I don't know

02:14:21.160 - 02:14:37.890

if the lawyers will go along with it and we said well we're writing the rule so we did we wrote a rule for all preferences mandatory mediation. And one of the advantages of it is you'd have to pay for the mediator. So most of these cases

02:14:37.890 - 02:14:55.700

would settle before the mediator was even appointed. Some of us would not consider that an advantage. Being forced to settle. But from your perspective it was, it was a good incentive. It was a very good incentive, in fact I had promised what either

02:14:55.700 - 02:15:09.299

John Akard or Paul Lindsey, they're like, well, I don't think I can handle 25,000 trials. I said, you're not gonna have to try a single case. We're gonna, you know, you're gonna set up this mediation system and then they'll all go away. And he, when he

02:15:09.299 - 02:15:23.464

ended his, I think he was here two years when he ended, he said. You know, you lied to me. I actually had to have 4 trials in my 2 years here, 4 trials out of thousands of that. One of them was the Kiwi decision, the

02:15:23.464 - 02:15:36.584

one that was a big issue in all the preferences, and I forget what the issue was, but he had a test case. Everybody agreed to do a test case and he had a two week long trial and then wrote a very good decision on some

02:15:37.549 - 02:15:56.149

preference defense issue and so. And this was before the bankruptcy code was changed right now at that time you could bring a preference even for tiny little for $500 yeah yeah yeah so and they brought them all here because defendants were all over the

02:15:56.149 - 02:16:19.979

country. So that was good and another point I wanted to make about the NCBJ about how rewarding it was NCBJ really was. The equivalent of a 350 man law firm of bankruptcy judges, you're back to working on a big team. We

02:16:19.979 - 02:16:34.219

were on a big team and we were able to, I mean I could pick up the phone on any issue. I started getting motions to dismiss for abuse in Chapter 7 cases. I told you we didn't have any we had maybe a dozen and I

02:16:34.219 - 02:16:49.030

got a dozen motions by the US trustee. And I knew nothing about the standard or what to do, and I called Gene Wedoff in Chicago, and he had written 3 or 4 opinions on it. He walked me through the standards and helped me figure that

02:16:49.030 - 02:17:08.218

out. On other issues in Chapter 15s, I've called Martin Glenn in New York who has a million chapter 15 issues and writes very detailed opinions about it, so. I have gotten a lot out of the NCBJ. Well, and your job is pretty isolating, so

02:17:08.218 - 02:17:25.579

this was a chance for you to have a bigger group of people, to colleagues to talk with, yeah, and, and as you know, the NCBJ is a nice party. It's a terrific party, nice venues, nice hotels, yes, but I don't know if

02:17:25.579 - 02:17:46.759

you remember my year. As president of the NCBJ, it was held in Las Vegas. I remember that 3 days after the shooting. What shooting? The shooting at the, what was the name, the mass shooting, the mass shooting that killed 64 people that were attending a

02:17:46.759 - 02:18:04.049

music festival that was like the biggest mass shooting in the country at that time, maybe still is, still is. So it happens on Saturday and we're due to go there Wednesday. Wow. So the security had to be crazy. Well, first we get a million calls. Everybody

02:18:04.049 - 02:18:18.679

wanted to cancel. And we can't cancel, you know, how are we gonna do this? Maybe we can cancel and get our insurance, so. I said the first thing we have to find out is it safe to be there so we called a meeting of the board

02:18:18.679 - 02:18:38.040

and got the US marshals involved and the US marshal was great. He said, listen, this is the safest place in the country right now. Do you know how many local and state and federal police officials are here? He said it is clean. The dog found the

02:18:38.040 - 02:18:56.429

bombs in the car, so it is, there is no danger here. And then we talked with our next meeting was with the hotel and they said please come here because if you don't come here our employees don't get paid. Most of them are gig

02:18:56.429 - 02:19:16.219

workers, bartenders, waitresses, and if you don't come they don't get paid so we did go we told all the lawyers. Well our report said that this is the safest place. It's too late for us to cancel. Our policy doesn't allow it. Our insurance won't cover it,

02:19:16.269 - 02:19:34.700

and we are going. We will all be there. And did people come? 1600 people. We actually got more people than had originally registered, OK? And it was just terrific. It was just I thanked all the people for showing up and told them, you know, everybody who

02:19:34.700 - 02:19:52.700

is giving you a drink or serving your dinner appreciates you being here because so many concerts and conventions have canceled as a bankruptcy judge and a bankruptcy lawyer, you certainly know what it's like when it's some catastrophic thing, you know, ruins the business, exactly, exactly.

02:19:52.860 - 02:20:09.219

So that was very that was very good, I think that we did that and how unlucky that it happened on your watch, yeah. But we still had a party and we did. And in fact, Delaware, the Delaware bar threw a party for me

02:20:09.219 - 02:20:27.099

that was all desserts and as you know, I really appreciated that. Yes, you do like I do like my desserts. Well, that was perfect. That was perfect. I forgot all about the shooting though. That's yeah so you talked about traveling a little bit, and

02:20:27.099 - 02:20:41.179

you happen to mention Ed. Ed is your husband and it's the same Ed that was your mentor at Clark Ladner. So we'll talk just I know it's personal, but you know, talk a little bit about how that happened. Well, he was my mentor and you

02:20:41.179 - 02:20:59.459

know, obviously the business relationship was completely, you know, business. The firm collapsed. Everybody goes. He ended up at Pepper. He ended up at Pepper Troutman now, and, I ended up, you know, on the bench and 5 years later I ran into him at a

02:20:59.459 - 02:21:15.309

conference at Eastern District of Pennsylvania conference, OK, and I hadn't seen him and I felt guilty because I had been so busy. I hadn't kept up with any of my Clark Ladner friends and they were my friends. They were my, you know, my family. So

02:21:15.530 - 02:21:31.459

we got reacquainted. He was divorced at the time and contrary to my plan for my life, which was never to get married and just throw myself into my career, which you did, you were successful for a long time, we ended up getting married and when was

02:21:31.459 - 02:21:47.540

that? 2002. OK, so while you were still crazy busy you managed to squeeze that in exactly. Again, I had others plan that whole event. And he was a sailor and you guys did have done a lot of traveling we had, yeah, in fact, I

02:21:47.540 - 02:21:58.940

think that while we were dating, he took me out sailing on he had a huge boat and I had only sailed on a small boat and I think it was a test to see if I really did like sailing because if I didn't, it was not

02:21:58.940 - 02:22:15.690

going anywhere. But you passed that test I passed that test and yeah he had a big boat and we sailed every weekend and he was very good for me because. We would go sailing every weekend and when you're sailing you're only thinking about whether or

02:22:15.690 - 02:22:29.209

not you're gonna live or die. You're not thinking about what's happening back at the office. This is just two of you on a boat 2 of us on a boat, and we also raced so you're, you know, in competition, so a lot of adrenaline going and

02:22:29.209 - 02:22:51.330

none of it focusing on the office, so it really was a good way to refresh myself. You know, a break, take a break. And all his good attributes as a manager have helped me because he's been very helpful in my career. He's been very helpful

02:22:51.330 - 02:23:07.160

when I was the NCBJ president we had had a big blowout. I didn't even tell you about I need not go into the big blowout that happened as I was getting on a plane to fly out to the conference, the first panel at the conference

02:23:07.160 - 02:23:32.019

decided they were gonna quit. OK, for a particular reason? They wanted to put on a speaker who was going to criticize the United States Truste's office on a particular legal issue. And we, our committee, our education committee decided you can't do that. We are not

02:23:32.019 - 02:23:47.759

well first of all we're nonpolitical, we're educational, and we really don't take positions on controversies that have not been decided. We really can't do that. Well, these two, they were two professors and they decided it was free speech. So I had to get on the phone

02:23:47.759 - 02:24:06.969

and say, listen, it's not free speech. You know we are a conference of judges we cannot take political stand or legal stance on issues that have not been decided. There are cases pending we cannot take it well then we're gonna quit. I said, OK, you can

02:24:06.969 - 02:24:23.240

quit. And well you can't get anybody to replace us now it's 2 days before the conference. I said if I and the chairman of the education committee have to go on that stage in place of view, we will do that. But we cannot take this. You're

02:24:23.240 - 02:24:37.400

gonna have to change it and get rid of that speaker. We cannot allow it. You could well we could do it anywhere else. I said yes, you can go to any other conference, but we are a conference of bankruptcy judges who are governed by the judicial

02:24:37.400 - 02:24:52.339

code of ethics. So we had that by the time I landed, of course law professor would understand that and understand that by the time we landed they both had changed their mind. That's good. That's good. Well, that was a rocky, yeah, you know, term

02:24:52.339 - 02:25:05.620

for you. That was a very rocky term, but the best part is I got to my hotel room and there was a big vase of flowers from Ed. OK, so that helped, yeah, that really helped, yeah, so he, he practiced some bankruptcy, right? He did practice

02:25:05.620 - 02:25:25.669

on bankruptcy obviously he never appeared before me. I think that would be his, his firm did appear does appear in Delaware and actually we had to when we got engaged we had to do a letter following the protocol that the Supreme Court has adopted regarding

02:25:26.059 - 02:25:43.559

whether a first degree relative of the judge is in a firm where the firm appears before the judge. Is it appearing or is it that they're getting their fees approved by you? Well, that's, that was what the protocol was. The protocol was that the firm can

02:25:43.559 - 02:26:01.940

appear before you and you can be married to this person. They could be in the firm. As long as they receive no compensation from any work that. I see. The firm derived from appearing before you, OK. As it turned out, the easiest way for Pepper to

02:26:01.940 - 02:26:21.799

keep track of that was just to carve out any Delaware fees, whether it's before me or Peter from consideration of his compensation. Interesting, well, and I think Peter was used to that too, it's a small town, so everyone. Everyone appears everyone has a relative who

02:26:21.799 - 02:26:38.519

appears before. I think his daughter-in-law, his daughter-in-law was at my firm at Young Conaway, and we had a lot of cases in front of him and his son was at another firm, so the protocol then was set already set up before I married Ed. So I

02:26:38.519 - 02:26:52.559

would sign the fee application approve the fee applications and the retention applications for his relatives, and he would for Pepper. So we worked it out and I know we didn't talk about this ahead of time, so I'm sorry, but I know on your travels I know

02:26:52.559 - 02:27:04.589

you have this tradition where you would take all your nieces and nephews on a trip, so you got, you got to do a lot of you have a lot, you have a big family, a lot of nieces and nephews. I have 8 nieces and nephews

02:27:04.919 - 02:27:16.740

and took each of them when they graduated from high school. I would take them on a trip and the deal was they could pick wherever they wanted to go and we'd go for 2 weeks, but one of the weeks we'd have to do a bike

02:27:16.740 - 02:27:29.769

tour. Because I like biking and I knew that they had a lot of energy and they needed to work some of that off. So, so what, what was your favorite place or if you probably have a million of we went to Europe we went to France

02:27:29.780 - 02:27:51.719

and Italy and Switzerland. We went to Tanzania. We went to South Africa. We went to China and Japan. So a lot of great places they picked great places and we extended that Ed's grandsons and granddaughter were growing up just as I was finishing up with my

02:27:51.719 - 02:28:09.830

nieces and nephews so we gave them the same deal. So we've gone to very and then Ed and I have traveled are my favorite places on earth. Number one would be Antarctica and Patagonia. That was in one trip. That was fabulous. And number 2 would be

02:28:09.830 - 02:28:23.910

Galapagos, the Galapagos that you went there, yes, awesome I did too. It is amazing. It's amazing the cruises for both of them, yeah, yeah, yeah, those are kind of life changing places, aren't they? They are, yeah they are. They're so different. I still have on my

02:28:23.910 - 02:28:42.240

bucket list Australia and New Zealand, so maybe I'll get there, to get there, yeah. Now you have time it seems all right, we kind of, that was interesting. So, so you've been, so you got on the bench September of '98, so you got through one

02:28:42.240 - 02:29:00.820

full term and you're almost through another full term, so 26 years. On the bench, wow, so from where you sit, how do you think the court has changed over the years? Oh, it has changed, it really has obviously in numbers we have 8

02:29:00.820 - 02:29:16.879

judges, every single judge that has served here, I think has been excellent. Really excellent. They've been great comrades to have. It's nice to have 8 now so that instead of calling judges all over the country, I can just go down the hall, right, and,

02:29:16.910 - 02:29:35.650

and say I got this interesting issue. And they will call me too, so it's a great exchange of information kind of like a little firm you're in it's a great little firm. Yeah what about the bar? The cases have

02:29:35.650 - 02:29:54.650

continued to file here so I think it's work. I think the bar is excellent as I said earlier we have excellent attorneys argue before us we have terrific briefing. There's rarely an instance where I find additional research is needed when I'm writing an

02:29:54.650 - 02:30:14.150

opinion. They've really given me everything I need to know and now you actually have time to read it before you, yeah, before I make a decision off the top of my head, yeah. So when you were clerking for Judge Goldhaber, you had a

02:30:14.150 - 02:30:30.570

picture of what it was like I guess but this I assume this has been a lot different this has far exceeded my expectations simply because of the of the cases that we get here it is intellectually challenging every single day, every single hearing I

02:30:30.570 - 02:30:49.929

have. I get a little twist, a little something new, a little different spin on something. It doesn't get old for you. It does not get old at all. Do the lawyers get old? I don't mean, I don't mean in in age and how they

02:30:49.929 - 02:31:08.429

press you for things. I don't think so. I think, I mean, certainly the Delaware lawyers. By and large are very respectful, very professional, very, very good in reading the bench. I think they know me by, I was gonna say it helps that you've been

02:31:08.429 - 02:31:25.209

here long enough that people, people certainly do know how you run your courtroom. When I look at them ascance they realize this isn't working, so there's like a little scrunch yeah turn your head to the sideways and yeah. Yes, like, really, is that your argument? Yes,

02:31:25.459 - 02:31:50.290

yeah, what, what do you think. What do you think has been the most challenging part of the job? Oh boy. Sometimes keeping my temper and early on when it was so hectic you never it never seemed that you had a temper good good just

02:31:50.290 - 02:32:10.000

trying to keep an even keel. It's always challenging, as I say, active listening is very challenging for me, I'm very much a a visual learner, I find it easier just to sit and read the brief so that I can take my time to digest

02:32:10.000 - 02:32:31.099

it. Trying to pay attention to arguments in court is very challenging. That's part of the reason I prepare so much beforehand. What about witnesses like who are maybe not the most dynamic? Yeah. You can pay attention. I can pay attention. Do you have any tricks? I have to. I do drink

02:32:31.099 - 02:32:45.709

a lot of Diet Coke and I take notes which forced me to stay awake, yeah, I don't know if I told you the one. It was an oral argument and I go out. Luckily I had prepared and I go out and the lawyer says there

02:32:45.709 - 02:33:01.129

are 5 reasons why you should decide in my favor. And the third reason is, and I'm like, holy smokes it I just doze off. Because I missed 1 and 2 and then I'm frantically trying to look through my notes. Where's 1 and 2? And luckily he

02:33:01.129 - 02:33:15.209

was very organized and did them in the order he had in his brief. So after that though, I realized I have got to drink a lot of Diet Coke and I have to stay awake. Yes, that was a little scary, I assume. I didn't have to

02:33:15.209 - 02:33:27.179

ask him to. Could you please repeat your first two arguments? That would be embarrassing. Oh my God. What do you, what do you think? I know you used to like to write a lot. What is, what is the part that you do you still enjoy that? I love writing.

02:33:27.299 - 02:33:40.459

Is that, is that your favorite part? It's just my favorite part, but a close second is working with my law clerks, OK, because, as you mentioned, I was a law clerk and I got so much out of my clerkship that I feel like I have to

02:33:40.459 - 02:33:54.919

pay it forward and I get new law clerks every year. Now I can have two of them. And so you never had a permanent clerk, never had a permanent clerk, yeah, so that's a big, that's harder for you, right, because you got a brand new person

02:33:54.919 - 02:34:07.480

who doesn't know anything about bankruptcy sometimes and they have to learn the way I do things and I have to learn the way they write and I try and I try and work with them as far as improving their writing. I have to say it's

02:34:07.480 - 02:34:27.419

been challenging recently on writing skills. I don't know if it was COVID or what, but it's people writing on. You know, on their phones and using shorthand maybe and also their research skills are lacking, and I think it's because computer research and they find a cutesy

02:34:27.419 - 02:34:39.459

quote that seems to support them, they put it in that is not the holding of the case. It's either dicta or they actually said, you know, that all the courts have said blah blah blah, but we disagree and we hold the opposite. So how do you

02:34:39.459 - 02:34:53.000

deal with that? Do you still have to read all the cases yourself? I always do before I issue an opinion, I read all the cases just to be sure that they are actually saying what what I'm saying they say. So the clerks aren't that helpful. They

02:34:53.000 - 02:35:05.849

are, yeah, they, they get you started, yeah, yeah. Now do you tell them this is the way I want to rule or do you leave it up to them? And I don't even tell them how to rule. I want you first step one. Give me

02:35:05.849 - 02:35:22.330

one paragraph that is the argument of the plaintiff on this point and one paragraph, the argument of the defendant, and I want you to put it in English. And it may be consolidating 5 pages of. And then let's we'll do an outline and then I want

02:35:22.330 - 02:35:38.910

the arguments on each side, do not decide it. And I want you to read the cases and tell me who whose argument is better and why see if you can write it or come in and tell me and we can talk about it, so it's,

02:35:38.990 - 02:35:54.349

it's very, I'm very anal, very organized these years. I use the same process all these years and is that what you did for Goldhaber? Yeah, yeah, OK, so he has been an influence, yes, he has, yes, he has, yeah. And what about Peter Walsh? Was he,

02:35:54.389 - 02:36:10.339

did he. I know he was kept to himself and he was so busy, but did he, you know, any, any memorable advice or, you know, from him or anything you learned from him, let me put it that way. Other than how to manage, he did,

02:36:10.830 - 02:36:29.450

as I say, he had a strong sense of ethics and he also had a a level headed temperament. He didn't get overexcited or over anxious like I did in the early days, so I tried to emulate that. I really did. I assume that's part of

02:36:29.450 - 02:36:44.799

like Judge school, right, to try to have a poker face. Or not. No, they don't really tell you how to be a judge. They do give you good advice like trying to decide from the bench. It does not get better with age. It starts to smell

02:36:44.799 - 02:37:02.040

like fish. And you think that you can write a great opinion, but you know, is it really worth it? You know, yeah, so, so are there speaking of smelling like fish, can you think of any cases that were just really horrible or the

02:37:02.040 - 02:37:15.759

other, the other direction that were really you know especially you know fun or interesting or challenging anything stick out because you've got so many. There have been so many and they really all have been challenging in their own regard. I've had to learn a new industry

02:37:15.759 - 02:37:28.660

as you know when you get a new case, you have to learn what the industry why is it where this company where it is, how do I think. Is it gonna be able to get out? There's so many sale cases now that I don't

02:37:28.660 - 02:37:49.280

usually have to go through that analysis. I did have a lot of big name cases early in my career I had a lot of big telecom cases and nursing home cases. I've had car rental cases, National and Hertz rental cars. I've had shipping companies and

02:37:49.280 - 02:38:09.360

insurance holding companies. I had Harvey Weinstein's production company. And a lot of them had novel issues to decide, which made it challenging and interesting for me. For example, when I got the WaMu case, I initially thought it would be an easy case because, of course the

02:38:09.360 - 02:38:28.929

bank had already been taken over by the FDIC and sold to JP Morgan. But I was wrong, and there were lots of challenging issues in that case, but my most memorable memory in that case was of the confirmation hearing when an individual preferred shareholder got up

02:38:28.929 - 02:38:47.820

the courage to come to the podium to speak on an issue that the debtor had kind of glossed over. Which was that preferred shareholders in the same class were not being treated the same. The larger preferred shareholders were given the right to participate in an offering,

02:38:48.410 - 02:39:06.339

while the smaller ones like this individual were not. So I was glad he had taken the podium, and I was happy to sustain his objection because it was right. Largely as a result of the WaMu case, I have also had the opportunity to serve on several

02:39:06.339 - 02:39:25.099

committees dealing with proposals on how to deal with systemically important financial institutions who get into trouble. I've even had an opportunity to testify before Congress on one of those proposals. Of course, none of them have passed, and we are in a time when we may

02:39:25.099 - 02:39:53.769

be facing what happened in 2008 and 2009 again. But yeah, I've had some dog cases. I had one particular one. Where I determined that the CRO was not disinterested because he had to deal with the secured creditor to get paid. And when did you

02:39:53.769 - 02:40:11.709

find out at the at the application stage or later? Oh the confirmation. When that was the only creditor that had voted in favor of the plan and so I said I'm not I can't confirm this plan there's a clear conflict of interest. It was not

02:40:11.709 - 02:40:33.259

disclosed, so the CRO can't even get his fees and I appointed a trustee and then the trustee hired the CRO. And he pushed the same plan and I said I'm not approving this plan. There's a conflict of interest and somebody who's not this CRO has

02:40:33.259 - 02:40:50.620

to advise you trustee whether it's a good plan or not. Well, he's an expert in this industry. Is he the only one? Is he that's what I said. Is he, he can't be the only one, so. But actually, so you weren't very popular I assume. No

02:40:50.620 - 02:41:09.429

I wasn't popular on that case but you know something where there's an ethical problem you've just got to address it and and deal with it. No judge likes to approve something that's not fair or that's unethical. And just because it's the way business is done isn't

02:41:09.429 - 02:41:28.620

a good argument. For the most part, you would think that would be caught by the lawyers early, but I guess not always, yeah, I know you would. So. All right, so this court has been again at the forefront of bankruptcy for as long as I can

02:41:28.620 - 02:41:41.540

remember and you have been here for almost all of that time. I mean, Judge Balick of course put it on the map, no question about it, and then Judge, she and Judge Walsh, you know, did, you know, an amazing job, but I mean, well,

02:41:41.620 - 02:41:58.709

I certainly cannot take credit for that and as you say, Judge Balick and Judge Walsh had a lot to do with establishing Delaware as a venue for large cases. All the judges have all contributed to the excellent reputation here. This includes in 2006 when we got

02:41:58.709 - 02:42:20.339

Brendan Shannon, Kevin Carey, Kevin Gross, and Chris Sontchi on board. All of them added to the luster of the bench. And when Peter retired in 2015, Laurie Silverstein took the bench and has added to its reputation. In 2020, Karen Owens and John Dorsey joined the bench

02:42:20.669 - 02:42:41.870

after Judge Kevin Carey and Kevin Gross retired to go back to practicing law. In 2021, Kate Stickles and Craig Goldblatt were appointed when we got two new spots. And in 2023, after Judge Sontchi retired and went back to practicing law, Tom Horan was appointed. All

02:42:41.870 - 02:43:01.110

of the judges and all of the attorneys in Delaware are committed to making this district a beacon of professionalism and ethics. So I can't take credit alone for its reputation. And we've also had great support from our clerks of court and the clerk's office. I mentioned

02:43:01.110 - 02:43:19.209

how great David Byrd was and how he worked to modernize, professionalize and expand the court. And when he retired we were fortunate to get another great clerk of court Una O'Boyle. She had clerked for Judges Lifland and Brozman in the Southern District of New York. Had

02:43:19.209 - 02:43:39.269

been an associate with a large firm and had worked in the clerk's office in the Southern District of New York. She had, interestingly enough, been at in the Southern District of New York when Hurricane Sandy hit. And immediately becoming the clerk of court in our court,

02:43:40.070 - 02:43:59.570

she insisted we get an emergency plan to prepare for just such a disaster. And that was finished just before COVID hit. So within 2 weeks of being sent home, all of the judges had laptops and were ready to start Zoom hearings. We really would not have

02:43:59.570 - 02:44:16.900

been able to do that without the work of Una and the clerk's office in preparing that emergency COOP plan. And we are now very fortunate to have Stephen Grant take over the helm from Una. As you know, Stephen started in our court as an ECRO, moved

02:44:16.900 - 02:44:38.480

into IT, served on the circuit and National IT and IT Security committees. He was also called upon by the administrative office. To oversee 8 programs and serve 2 years in the administrative office doing that. We are very fortunate that he came back to become our clerk

02:44:38.480 - 02:44:53.980

of court. You should, I assume you feel proud of yourself. You should. How do you feel about how it's been? I think I've done all right. I really do. I think that I was up to the task. I would not have told you that after the

02:44:53.980 - 02:45:12.490

first week and really first two years of being here, but I think I have learned enough and I, I feel a great sense of accomplishment with the local rules. And with getting CM/ECF here and with hiring David Byrd and then Una O'Boyle being part of getting

02:45:12.490 - 02:45:29.429

two really good clerks of court here. So you're talking about the tasks you did but it overall though you also were responsible for I mean all the lawyers in this town I mean all these firms have grown and grown and grown because

02:45:29.429 - 02:45:43.809

of our bench and that was you and Peter for a long time and now of course you have, you know, many other great judges but I mean. I don't know if you feel proud about that, but it seems like you should. I don't really, really,

02:45:43.849 - 02:46:01.740

I don't really think of it from that perspective. No, because obviously that was not my impetus. My impetus was to do the best job I could regardless, we obviously did is what I'm saying, because otherwise we would not, you know, this court would not

02:46:01.740 - 02:46:19.400

be what it is today. I just think my takeaway from this whole thing, my whole life really has been I've been very lucky. Because when bad things happened, better things happen to me all the law firms that I caused to collapse, I've ended up in

02:46:19.400 - 02:46:36.120

a better place, so this place is still standing. I know, I know. Anything else you wanna talk about that, you know, looking back on that you think it's important to know about your tenure? I know it's not over yet. You still have, you know,

02:46:36.360 - 02:46:50.040

a couple of years, yeah, yeah. I'll stay through the end of my term. I may, I would like to go on recall, and I think we have enough cases to justify that, and that would give me more flexibility but would also allow the court to

02:46:50.040 - 02:47:06.469

appoint somebody to replace me, if need be. I don't know if we, I think right now we do fine with the judges we have. We are not all overloaded although we just got 3 cases filed today, so. Can't speak for the rest of the

02:47:06.469 - 02:47:24.139

week, let alone the rest of the my term. But your term ends September then of '26, yeah, and they will keep me till they recommend that you retire in January so we hear through, yeah, all through the next year and maybe longer if you can be on

02:47:24.139 - 02:47:39.610

recall, yeah, yeah, so you haven't had because I love what I'm doing, yeah, but it would be nice to have flexibility to travel more if I wanted to. I feel guilty. I know that there's no set amount of vacation I'm allowed it, but I do

02:47:39.610 - 02:47:52.769

feel guilty taking a whole lot of vacations. Shouldn't because there were lots of years where you didn't have any, not even weekends, yeah, yeah. Well, from where I'm sitting, I'm, I'm gonna say I'm very proud of you, Judge Walrath, because I knew you when and although

02:47:52.769 - 02:48:09.080

you were always the star, but, but now you're, you really are, so I wasn't always the star but well it is nice to feel appreciated. You are, you definitely are. As I said, I have been very fortunate in my life and career. But it

02:48:09.080 - 02:48:24.599

would not have been possible to do any of the things I have done without the support of my family who have always been there for me. And my fellow judges here in Delaware. But I've also relied on the support of many, many judges throughout the country.

02:48:25.650 - 02:48:44.169

It is like having a 350 person law firm. Being a bankruptcy judge in this country. I can learn from them, and at times, they reach out to me regarding how we do things in Delaware. It's been a great relationship. And finally I could not have done

02:48:44.169 - 02:49:00.820

what I have done without my mentors, Judge Goldhaber. Who trained me in bankruptcy law and convinced me I could become a bankruptcy lawyer and litigator. And of course, Ed Toole, who trained me as a young associate and always supported me in my professional and now in

02:49:00.820 - 02:49:19.530

my personal life. He has taught me great skills in dealing with opposing counsel that I still use from the bench, being respectful of counsel but pushing them to explain their position. He has also taught me to keep everything in perspective, and when things go wrong,

02:49:19.820 - 02:49:39.820

to always look for a solution, not for somebody to blame. I could not have accomplished anything without his support, and I will be eternally grateful for that. But I think that my life's experiences can also be an example to everyone attorneys, business people, my law clerks.

02:49:40.980 - 02:49:57.070

That when things are the bleakest out of the ashes will emerge a new life, a new career, a new business. So I think that's a good place to end. Thank you thank you thank you for doing this. Thank you. It was fun. It was.