Creditor ING Bank is keeping alive the memory of bunkering giant OW Bunker with more legal action, this time against one of its own bankruptcy trustees.
Danish media report that the OW Bunker bankruptcy estate is going after John Sommer Schmidt and Gorrissen Federspiel, the law firm where he is a partner, with a DKK 523m ($79.1m) claim.
Danish business daily Finans reported that lawyers from another firm took out the legal action against Sommer Schmidt and his firm in Copenhagen Municipal Court last Thursday. The basis for the claim is that the administrator missed a deadline for taking action to recover some $64m against investment bank Jefferies. The claim against Sommer Schmidt and Gorrissen Federspiel includes that sum plus interest.
TradeWinds reported in December 2014, soon after the collapse of OW, that Jefferies had disclosed making a financial provision for some $52m in related losses. Jefferies has not otherwise been a prominent name in the global aftermath of the OW Bunker collapse.
Sommer Schmidt is one "kurator" (trustee or bankruptcy administrator) of the OW bankruptcy estate, the other being Pernille Bigaard of law firm Plesner. The estate is controlled by main creditor ING Bank.
ING has pursued an aggressive global litigation strategy throughout the five-year drama, but not previously against its own lawyers.
Finans quotes Boris Frederiksen of law firm Kammeradvokaten, who is the lawyer now bringing the case against the OW liquidators' other lawyer Sommer Schmidt, as calling the missed deadline an "honest mistake".
Gorrissen Federspiel managing partner Martin Andre Dittmer denied to the Danish newspaper that his firm and partner Sommer Schmidt had made any error that entailed legal responsibility, and said the firm had reported the matter to its insurers.
Parties in the case could not immediately be reached for comment.
The new high-stakes battle among legal teammates comes at an eventful time in the five-year aftermath of the global bunkerer's collapse. A Danish court recently increased the criminal sentence of former OW Bunker executive Lars Moller from 18 months to five years following a prosecutor's appeal.
