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Battle against COVID-19: W&B Launched New Working-at-Home; Model and Held an Online Creditors’ Meeting in a Bankruptcy Case
Thu Feb 20 17:18:00 CST 2020 Published by:Editor

Battle against COVID-19: W&B Launched New Working-at-Home 

Model and Held an Online Creditors’ Meeting in a Bankruptcy Case

 

Shuiping Huang

 

Facing the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic and the current situation of epidemic prevention and control, to actively advocate the Government’s calling on reducing public gathering, Watson & Band launched its new working-at-home model on February 10, 2020. Despite the inconvenience that might be involved in this new model, we promise no delay in any of our cases.

The new model is also applied to bankruptcy cases. The first creditors’ meeting for Shanghai Zhongzheng Fuel Oil Co., Ltd., which was originally scheduled to be held in the 14th Courtroom of Shanghai No.3 Intermediate People’s Court at 9:30 a.m. on February 12, 2020, could not be held on the scene as a result of the epidemic. Although the case is not complicated, in the eyes of Watson & Band lawyers, there is no difference in bankruptcy cases, regardless of the case value; likewise, the interests of creditors are in no way trivial – with each day in delay, their interests will suffer greater harm. For this concern, the lawyers communicated with the judge in advance and discussed how to overcome such a situation. After rounds of discussions, to better safeguard the health of all persons involved in the case, it was decided to hold the first creditors’ meeting via the Internet on the date as originally scheduled.


This was a meaningful effort after the Shanghai No.3 Intermediate People’s Court promulgated the Rules on Online Creditors’ Meetings and the corresponding implementing rules like the Notice on Remote Attendance of Creditors, and the Outline for Online Creditors’ Meetings.


The change in the form of the meeting meant more preparation and communication work on the part of our lawyers. Before the formal meeting, the lawyers had to prepare and distribute necessary documents, and guide the relevant attendees of the creditors and the debtor via phone calls, emails and WeChat to install and test the system to be used for the meeting. Since said system had to be downloaded from a specific URL and had certain requirements on the hardware system for its installation, many creditors were not familiar with the downloading process and encountered problems in normal use of the system after installation. Our lawyers provided online guidance and explanations for them once and again. Notwithstanding all those time and efforts on the preparatory work, we were willing to dedicate to our original aspiration to smoothly proceeding with the meeting.

    

As scheduled, the first creditors’ meeting for Shanghai Zhongzheng Fuel Oil Co., Ltd. started via the Internet at 9:30 a.m. on February 12, 2020. The judge, the administrator, the legal representatives of the creditor and the debtor all carried out the work online so that the case would proceed without being affected by the epidemic. Such practice not only ensured the interests of the creditors, but also avoided potential spread of the epidemic due to public gathering. The advantages of online creditors’ meetings were given full play during this battle against the epidemic.



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