Susan Hardie Jacks

Experience

Susie and her team represented a Liquidating Trustee tasked with pursuing claims arising out of a real estate fraud scheme. The case involved more than 100 institutional lenders and private individuals who loaned or invested $70 million in a Ponzi scheme based on promises of guaranteed returns on private mortgages. The defendants were title companies sued for aiding and abetting the Ponzi perpetrator as well as for fraud and breach of contract in the handling of over 1,200 title transactions. After five years of litigation, two sets of defense counsel, and two appeals, the case settled favorably to the Liquidating Trustee.

Experience

In a chapter 11 case filed in Phoenix, Arizona, Susie was lead special counsel to a corporate debtor that manufactured electronic goods. The reorganized debtor pursued claims against a Hong Kong circuit board maker and the debtor’s Alabama-based customer based on allegations of faulty design and manufacture. The case settled favorably for the debtor.

Experience

Susie and her colleagues were special counsel to Holcomb Health Care Services, LLC, which filed a chapter 11 bankruptcy case in the Middle District of Tennessee. HHCS had no financial resources to protect valuable intellectual property or to pursue causes of action against former management and other third parties. Susie was part of the trial team that successfully represented the debtor in several lawsuits that went to trial as well as in a contested chapter 11 plan confirmation hearing.

Experience

Two of the cases involved a fight over ownership of intellectual property and recovery of fraudulent conveyances of intellectual property made to the company’s former president and his affiliates of the president. Following a week-long trial, the firm obtained a judgment for over $7 million in cash and a declaratory judgment that intellectual property valued at many millions of dollars was property of the debtor’s bankruptcy estate. The court’s opinion is reported at Holcomb Health Care Servs., LLC v. Quart Limited, LLC et al. (In re Holcomb Health Care Servs., LLC), 329 B.R. 622 (Bankr. M.D. Tenn. 2004). The judgment paved the way for a handsome settlement among the debtor, the defendants, and other parties interested in the development of the intellectual property.

Another related proceeding involved HHCS’s malpractice case against the debtor’s former New York counsel, an international law firm. On the eve of trial, the case settled for a favorable sum to the estate in a confidential settlement

Experience

In this corporate chapter 7 bankruptcy case, the chapter 7 trustee engaged Susie to represent him in the prosecution of causes of action against the debtor’s insiders and lenders. This Houston bankruptcy case involved the debtor’s sale and marketing of “predictive dialing” equipment and software sold to dentists and chiropractors with a “money back, guaranteed” promise that the marketing package would increase sales. The trustee sued the lenders who financed the professionals’ purchases of the software and equipment based upon their alleged awareness of the debtor’s scam. Susie and her team secured settlements resulting in cash payments and reduction of claims against the estate totaling more than $2 million.

Experience

Susie served as special counsel to the chapter 7 trustees of the bankruptcy estates of a real estate developer and his affiliated companies who perpetrated a Ponzi scheme using straw buyers and promises of “guaranteed returns on investment.” The case involved more than 80 defendants, many of which were early investors in the scheme who received repayment of their capital and handsome returns on investment while other late investors and creditors were unpaid as of the bankruptcy filing date. After years of litigation on procedural issues, the Trustee recovered more than $1 million for the estates. Joseph M. Hill, Trustee of Juliet Homes, LLC et al. v. Alex Oria, et al., Consolidated Adv. No. 09-03429, In the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division. See also the decision reported at 2011 WL 6817928 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. Dec. 28, 2011).