Obituary of Judge Burton R. Lifland

Burton R. Lifland, a pre-eminent federal bankruptcy judge who for three decades rode herd on some of the nation's biggest corporate rescue efforts and presided over the financial chaos left by the swindler Bernard L. Madoff, died on Sunday in New Haven. He was 84. The cause was pneumonia, his son Craig said. The financial scholar Lynn M. LoPucki, in his 2006 book, "Courting Failure: How Competition for Big Cases Is Corrupting the Bankruptcy Courts," characterized Judge Lifland as "a bankruptcy celebrity" and "the judge who handled the big cases." At the heart of those cases were some of the country's biggest corporations, among them Johns-Manville, LTV, Eastern Airlines, R. H. Macy, Singer, Bethlehem Steel, Allis-Chalmers and Blockbuster. One of Judge Lifland's biggest challenges was sifting through the wreckage of Mr. Madoff's multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, in which some money from later investors was funneled to earlier investors to give the appearance of real financial gains. In March 2010, Judge Lifland ruled that the bilked investors were owed only the difference between what they paid into a Madoff account and what they withdrew. Mr. Madoff's victims had argued they should get the amount that they believed they had saved through their investments, amounting to $65 billion. The judge called this calculation "bogus," saying it "reflected Madoff's fantasy world of trading activity." He calculated that they were owed $18 billion. The investors protested. Helen Davis Chaitman, a lawyer for several hundred Madoff victims and a victim herself, said, "Unless this decision is reversed, no American who invests in the stock market with the hope of retiring on his savings has any protection against a dishonest broker." But Stephen P. Harbeck, president of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, the industry organization that provides limited protection to investors, countered that Judge Lifland's decision "does the greatest good for the greatest number of people, consistent with the law." Judge Lifland was chief judge of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York for most of his 33 years there, but his impact extended well beyond New York. In 1982, when the Johns-Manville Corporation filed for bankruptcy after being besieged by lawsuits claiming injury from its use of asbestos, Judge Lifland instructed the company to use most of its assets to create a trust to pay current and future claimants. The ruling was believed to be the first in which future claimants, still unknown, were specifically included in a bankruptcy arrangement. The idea became part of the federal bankruptcy code. Judge Lifland also cooperated with the State Department to draft Chapter 15 of bankruptcy law to deal with multinational financial failures. "He was not afraid to be innovative," Judge Cecelia G. Morris, his successor as chief judge, said in an interview on Tuesday. Professor LoPucki, who teaches at the law schools at Harvard and the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote that part of Judge Lifland's success lay in his commitment to saving companies if possible. The judge, he said, had a way of making lawyers "sorry they had not settled." In 1992, Judge Lifland approved a move by the conglomerate LTV Corporation to sell its aerospace operations so its steel company could survive. In the case of the video rental chain Blockbuster, he broke an impasse in negotiations in 2011 by ensuring that interested buyers would not liquidate the company, leaving creditors high and dry. Sometimes Judge Lifland put the public ahead of the parties fighting in his courtroom. In the case of Eastern Airlines, in 1989, he demanded that creditors and potential buyers of the beleaguered company resolve what he called "parochial interests" and get the planes in the air. "The public is a main player here," he said, citing consumers who had "scrimped and saved" to buy Eastern tickets that they found they could not use. Some negotiators were surprised that the judge had veered from normal matters of who owes what to whom to address customer concerns. The Associated Press quoted a union leader as saying, "Bankruptcy judges do not do heroic things very often." Burton Raymond Lifland was born on Sept. 30, 1929, in Brooklyn. He graduated from Syracuse University and Fordham University of Law School, then worked in private practice before being appointed to the bench in 1980. When the second circuit of federal courts had a special bankruptcy appeals panel from 1996 to 2000, he was its chief judge.Judge Lifland lived in Manhattan and Essex, Conn. In addition to his son Craig, he is survived by his wife of 62 years, the former Elaine Koren; another son, Howard; five grandchildren; and a great-grandson. Judge Lifland was said to have a biting sense of humor and an informal courtroom manner. During one tense closed-door negotiation, he made bowls of popcorn for everyone. In the early 1990s, when he was supervising the bankruptcy of R. H. Macy & Company, he demanded a guarantee "etched in some form of stone" that a reorganized Macy's would continue its Fourth of July fireworks and Thanksgiving Day parade. He hinted that he wanted the fireworks over the East River, near his home, rather than over the Hudson on Manhattan's West Side. (Both locations have been used for the display.) "I don't know why we want to bring New Jersey in," he said, "except through the medium of TV." Courtesy New York Times January 15,2014