Even After Winning Lawsuits Company Must File for Bankruptcy [e123]

The guys talk about Aereo's recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, even after it had won multiple lawsuits. They also answer the special Thanksgiving question, "Can I provide a free Thanksgiving meal to my employees?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. Uh, I messed up. MATT: You didn’t mess up. That’s the name of the podcast. NASIR: All right, welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Happy Thanksgiving! MATT: It’s a day early but… I assume people are traveling the day this comes out so they’ll probably listen to it during their Thanksgiving meal. NASIR: I figure. MATT: I know I plan on taking my phone out and just pressing play and letting everyone listen to it. NASIR: Oh, I’m getting one of those stereo components that I just plug it into at the dinner table, and I’ll turn it up really loud so no one can talk. MATT: People are going to treat this like the Serial podcast which I don’t know if you’ve followed at all. Have you followed that? NASIR: Cereal as in cereal that you eat or serial as in a series? MATT: The latter. Have you not heard about that? NASIR: No. MATT: It’s the most popular podcast right now by far. NASIR: I’ve never listened to a podcast in my life. MATT: I haven’t listened to it, but I’ve just heard about it. I think it’s fourteen episodes and there’s a new episode each week and it’s an on-going story, like a crime-related story. NASIR: And it’s very popular with only fourteen episodes? MATT: I don’t think they’ve even had fourteen episodes yet. It’s a series and it’s once a week and it’s insanely popular. But I won’t expect you to know because you don’t keep abreast of the stories in the news. NASIR: A turkey breast? MATT: Yeah, like what I did there? NASIR: Yeah. MATT: That was intentional. NASIR: I wasn’t sure if you that intentional or not so I just wanted to connect the dots for everyone. MATT: Well, let’s talk about a good story for Thanksgiving – or right before Thanksgiving – about this bankruptcy. NASIR: Yeah, it’s always a big topic around this time of year. MATT: Especially when they had big rounds of layoffs a couple of weeks ago, right before Thanksgiving, which is what everyone wants. I think the worst time to lay someone off is between Thanksgiving and Christmas, probably. NASIR: Oh, okay. So, then we’ll get rid of you after then. MATT: Is it Aereo? I’m assuming I’m pronouncing that right. NASIR: I don’t know. I know we’ve covered this in the past but I think it’s derived from the “aer” as in a-e-o – never mind. MATT: We’ll just go with Aereo. NASIR: I was trying to break it down to its Latin root but then I realized I don’t know Latin. MATT: No problem. Well, we’ll go with Aereo. NASIR: It’s an over-the-air streaming service so that’s why I was thinking, like, kind of like aeroplane. MATT: Oh, okay. Yeah, I could see that. Well, it’s described as near-live TV so I think that’s also called “delayed” but that’s fine. So, they filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy which a reorganization in bankruptcy court and, let’s see, New York this week? Sometime very recently. Yeah, so I guess that this came after a big round of layoffs which is no surprise there. This is pretty interesting. I mean, Chapter 11, that’s going to be different than a straight up discharge where you’re basically shutting down shop. They’re making an effort to kind of reorganize, pay some of their debt off while still continuing to survive. I think they’ve kind of just missed it on the technology front and not evolved how they should have so I don’t know if they’re going to make it anyways. But, you know, at least they’re making an effort to, I suppose. NASIR: Yeah, I mean, the reason they had to go through this bankruptcy is because of all these lawsuits. So, basically,

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