Update on Bankruptcy Appellate Practice: Part Two — Appellate Standing

Appeals from bankruptcy court orders continue to play a key role in bankruptcy practice. The relevant sections of the Judicial Code and the Federal Bankruptcy Rules arguably cover all the relevant issues in a straightforward manner. Recent cases, however, show that neither Congress nor the Rules Committees could ever address the myriad issues raised by imaginative lawyers. The appellate courts continue to wrestle with standing, jurisdiction, mootness, excusable neglect, and finality, among other things. The following overview, in a series of installments, shows what the courts have been addressing during just the past three years. In this article, Michael Cook covers appellate standing and the implications to bankruptcy practices.