County of Sonoma v. U.S. Bank: Court of Appeal Reaffirms Receivership Court’s Power to Authorize Priority Certificates and Strip Liens

Blake C. Alsbrook, Partner in ECJ’s Bankruptcy, Receivership and Creditors' Rights Department, recently wrote an article that has been published on the front page of the Spring 2021 edition of Receivership News, a Publication of the California Receivers Forum. His article, “County of Sonoma v. U.S. Bank: Court of Appeal Reaffirms Receivership Court’s Power to Authorize Priority Certificates and Strip Liens,” is a follow-up piece to a prior Receivership News article he wrote about a published opinion obtained by Blake and his late law partner in City of Sierra Madre v. SunTrust Mortgage.

In this article, Blake analyzes what he believes to be one of the most important California receivership cases in decades, detailing four key takeaways that “confirmed (or dusted off) many long-standing principles of receivership law well known to practitioners” and critical language that “can be used as authority in many different circumstances and touches upon a lot of what … receivers [do].”  Blake’s article explains how the opinion in County of Sonoma reinforces the law set forth in City of Sierra Madre and, in doing so, how the Court of Appeal rejected an attempt by an activist lender’s counsel to create a split of authority in California.

Read the full article for more of Blake’s insights on this matter.

A version of this article was also published in the March 2021 LACBA Remedies Section Newsletter.