Carlile Patchen & Murphy is a leader in the field of commercial law with particular expertise in financial transactions. Having earned a reputation for prompt service and creative problem solving, CPM represents nearly every major financial institution in Columbus, as well as out-of-state lenders. We also represent borrowers, brokers and parties supplying credit enhancement in connection with financings of all sizes and degrees of complexity, as well as parties engaged in acquiring financial institutions.
LENDING
Our Banking & Finance practice deals with corporate financings, asset-based lending and other secured transactions, lease financings, mortgage and construction financings, investor note financings and all forms of term and revolving credits.
TITLE WORK
Our title agency, Cornerstone Title, is an agent for Old Republic National Title Insurance Company and provides a full range of title services to our clients.
WORKOUT SERVICES
Our services do not end at the closing. When a client or a client’s customer develops financial difficulties, our Banking & Finance Group will work closely with all concerned to develop a workout strategy. We have represented borrowers, lenders and other interested parties in a broad range of workout situations, from restructurings, refinancing and reorganizations to bankruptcies, liquidations and foreclosures.
Banking & Finance Attorneys
COMMERCIAL FINANCING
OVERVIEW
Our banking and finance attorneys at Carlile Patchen & Murphy represent regional and national financial institutions, community banks, life insurance companies, captive lenders and other commercial lending and credit professionals in the documentation of commercial asset based, real estate, second lien or mezzanine credit transactions including acquisition, development, construction, agricultural and permanent financing as well as equipment leasing. Our attorneys provide our clients not only with documents that ensure legal, regulatory and internal rules compliance but confidence that all due diligence requirements will be met before the financing is completed.
Our attorneys have in-depth knowledge in providing commercial lenders’ assistance with intercreditor arrangements, subordinations, revolving loans, syndicated loans, aircraft loans, short track railroad loans, loans for solar photovoltaic energy generation systems, letters of credit, hotel/motel financing, floor plan financing, rate management transactions, low income housing tax credit loans as well as loan purchase and sale transactions and participation agreements.
COMMERCIAL LOAN WORKOUTS AND RESTRUCTURING
Our attorneys are skilled in representing commercial lenders when dealing with workouts of troubled loan facilities. We provide assistance in restructuring and modifying troubled credits through loan modifications, forbearance agreements and other pre-litigation strategies. When restructuring cannot be accomplished, our attorneys offer a wide variety of litigation and enforcement remedies to advocate for our clients including replevins, foreclosures, receiver’s sales, executions and garnishments.
REPRESENTATION OF BORROWERS
Our attorneys are likewise skilled in structuring, reviewing and negotiating commercial credit transactions for our borrower clients. Our experience includes all types of conventional credit transactions (asset or real estate based, public or private) but also extends to syndicated credit facilities and Housing and Urban Development, Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation loans for nursing homes, residential care facilities and multi-family properties.
CREDITOR RIGHTS
PROTECTION AND ENFORCEMENT OF CREDITOR RIGHTS IN BANKRUPTCY
Bankruptcy protection provides a powerful national (even international) forum for the protection of individuals and entities with creditor issues. The Bankruptcy Code establishes significant statutory and court procedural requirements, restrictions, rights and powers for a debtor once a Bankruptcy petition is filed.
At the same time, the Bankruptcy Code establishes a veritable thicket of complex obligations, rights, responsibilities and potential risks for the unwary who have, or even have had in the past, a relationship with a bankruptcy debtor. This is so not only where the debtor owes money, but includes virtually every other business relationship imaginable. Landlord or tenant, equipment lessor or lessee, contract party, secured creditor, mortgagee, intellectual property licensor or licensee, money owed, employee or employer, vendor, shipper, contactor, subcontractor, or material man – all can be implicated in a bankruptcy case. Many of the creditor’s rights and protections must be timely and properly raised to be enforced. The lack of diligent action can lose, or severely diminish, the creditor’s rights and potential recoveries in a bankruptcy situation. Our firm is very well positioned to advise those who must deal with a bankruptcy debtor and help identify and enforce their rights. We practice in all the state and federal courts of Ohio, as well nationally in bankruptcy matters as our clients’ circumstances may require.
BENEFITS OF USING CARLILE PATCHEN & MURPHY
Our firm has installed advanced computer software available for law firms engaged in collection practice. This enables us to provide our clients with:
- concise remittance, costs, and collection analysis reporting
- client established work standards
- access to skip-tracing and asset identification databases
SECURED CREDITOR RIGHTS ENFORCEMENT AND PROTECTION
Secured creditors enjoy special protections in bankruptcy, but only if all provisions to perfect a secured the secured creditor’s right must have been timely perfected under applicable state law.performed to enjoy that status in a Bankruptcy. Accordingly, attention to and completion of all requirements for perfection of a security interest will be crucial. This means not only the preparation and signing of all appropriate documentation, including but completion of many details, such as proper notarization of documents, but also timely proper and complete public filings, and similar considerations, and many other similar details. Likewise, once a Bankruptcy bankruptcy is filed, even a perfected secured creditor’s rights must be properly and timely asserted, or the benefits of those special rights can be lost or substantially rendered meaningless. Whether enforcing a creditor’s rights to adequate protection, to recovery of collateral or to restricting or preventing use of cash collateral, our firm is aware of the burdens and hurdles, potential risks and rewards that arise in these situations, as well as the requirements to accomplish them., and We have effectively guided our clients in enforcing their rights and protecting their positions under difficult circumstances.
DEFENDING BANKRUPTCY LITIGATION
Among the most frustrating aspects of bankruptcy, for creditors and non-creditors alike, are the very powerful rights that allow the debtor or trustee to essentially undo (avoid) and recover for the bankruptcy case the payments made and property transferred, or its value, and certain payments made by the debtor before the bankruptcy case was filed, in some cases years before. The These rights may engender demands debtor may demand return of the funds, or even file a to or lawsuits against a creditor or non-creditor to recover preferences, state and federal fraudulent conveyances (whether intentional or not), even undo or recover the value of sales transactions, set-offs, debt adjustments, forgiven debt, the release of mortgages or liens, or even the termination of leases and contracts rights by the debtor that occurred during the period before the bankruptcy was filed. For many years, our firm has defended these types of avoidance and recovery actions, as well as successfully asserted defenses, claims and other rights of our clients, in bankruptcy courts. Importantly, with a deep understanding of these types of potential risks, issues, and costs, our firm provides practical and knowledgeable counsel and advice so as to minimize these risks for our clients before the potential bankruptcy becomes a reality of a bankruptcy filing occurs.
DEALING WITH INSOLVENCY ISSUES
We represent clients who are involved in negotiations with financially challenged troubled persons, whether they are facing bankruptcy or both before and after that challenged person may be forced into Bankruptcy. The nature of breadth of these topics that arise in these negotiations is really unlimited, and can has included: landlord and tenant rights and protections, defending claims to recover preferences, defending claims for fraudulent conveyances, defending claims or lien avoidances, protecting use of cash collateral, enforcing proofs of claim, objection to claims allowance; representing clients in adversary proceedings and contested matters litigation, enforcing proofs of claim, enforcing lease rights and contract assumption or rejection and damages claims, enforcing creditor rights in chapter 13 plan proceedings rights, asserting with objections to debtor discharge and claim dischargeability. We have also enforcing claims and preparation of proofs of claim, lease and contract assumption or rejection and damages, enforcing creditor chapter 13 rights, asserting with objections to discharge and dischargeability represented representation of official creditors committee, either as lead counsel or local counsel, and special conflict counsel counsel. We are well-positioned to provide our clients not only advice, but also knowledgeable and experience and practical business solutions for potential transactions or troubled business relations.
