On August 22, 2012, an article filed by Law360 reporter Lisa Uhlman, entitled "$2.4B Payout to Madoff Victims Wins Court Approval," recognized the ongoing work of BakerHostetler Partners David J. Sheehan and Jorian Rose, and Associate Seanna Brown, as well as SIPA Trustee and BakerHostetler Partner Irving H. Picard. The article described the Bankruptcy Court's approval of the SIPA Trustee's motion for a second groundbreaking distribution of recoveries from the Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS) Customer Fund.
"Victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme are set to begin receiving $2.4 billion from his bogus investment firm's estate, the largest payout yet in the 3 1/2-year-old case, after a New York bankruptcy judge overruled several objections to the distribution Wednesday," wrote Ms. Uhlman in her summary of the court’s action. "U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Burton R. Lifland, who is overseeing the long-running case — one attorney pegged Wednesday as its 1,346th day — approved the distribution, which Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC liquidating trustee Irving Picard proposed July 26, over objections by several customers over the amount of a so-called holdback in connection with potential time-based damages litigation."
Ms. Uhlman also reported that the judge "…overruled the objections and denied a motion to stay the distribution pending appeal to the district court. 'A handful of litigious parties contend that the distribution should be capped at $1.5 billion in order to provide a larger reserve ... for time-based issues,' Judge Lifland said. 'The court declines to deny nearly $1 billion to nearly 1,000 Madoff victims, who've already lost so much, just to cover a litigation-based contingency that may or may not transpire.'" The article also referenced approval of the allocation of $5.5 billion to the BLMIS Customer Fund and the reserves to be set aside for the ongoing litigation issues, all of which is part of the case entitled Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, case number 1:08-ap-01789, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.