Bank | Judiciary.org

Frozen Funds, Sinking Deals: Navigating bank delays in ship sales – who should pay?

In the fast-paced world of ship sale and purchase (S&P), timing is everything. When millions of dollars are expected to change hands promptly between counterparties, even short delays can derail closing timelines, lead to contractual defaults, and trigger costly disputes.

With the decline of traditional payment letters and conditional SWIFT messages in maritime transactions, escrow arrangements and balance pre-positioning have become the standard mechanism for de-risking payment flows in ship sales. However, this shift has introduced new complexities. Increasingly, … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Little guidance from court on New York interest requirement on national bank escrow accounts

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion for a unanimous court Thursday in Cantero v. Bank of America will not be one for the casebooks or treatises, as it says almost nothing about how the lower court is supposed to reconcile provisions of the National Bank Act that protect national banks with a New York statute requiring all banks (including national banks) to pay interest on the escrow accounts they hold for their mortgage customers.

The difficulty arises because amendments to the … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Relist-palooza: Religious exercise, the False Claims Act, takings clause, RICO, bank secrecy, and more

The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.

This Friday’s conference represents a significant date in the Supreme Court’s schedule: Based on the schedule prescribed by the court’s rules, it is the last conference at which a cert petition can be granted and the case heard during the court’s April sitting. Because it appears that sitting is mostly empty at … Read the rest