How is my district doing at retaining cases?

The bankruptcy code gives firms a broad choice of bankruptcy courts in which to file.  In recent years, more than half of all filers chose one of two bankruptcy courts: Delaware or New York City.  In an attempt to retain cases filed by local companies, many other courts have begun adopting Delaware and New York practices.  You can use the WebBRD to see how successful various courts have been in retaining the bankruptcies of local companies.

You can do this study by district or by city.  I recommend city, because the factors that cause firm choices are more closely related to cities than districts.

In the first step, variable C. Headquarters Cities, check the city where the companies you are interested in have their headquarters.  In the second step, check only the boxes for Company Names and Frequency.  In the third step, select G. Forum Shopping.  The output will show you the percentage of cases that stayed in the district and the percentage that shopped out.

To see what courts the shoppers chose, change your third step selection to B. Filing city and resubmit your query.  The output will show you the courts in which the firms filed.  For example, if you wanted to see where firms headquartered in the Dallas area filed, you would have checked Dallas in first step (under C. Headquarters Cities) and B. Filing city in the third step.

By changing your choice in the Third Step and resubmitting, you can learn about other characteristics of the bankruptcies of the group of firms you selected in the first step.