PRACTICE FOCUS
With extensive experience at the national and regional levels, Joyce Kuhns brings her in-depth knowledge in delivering creative solutions to help transform financial challenges to successful outcomes. Whether representing businesses as debtors or creditors, creditors’ committees or equity committees, as a receiver or as an advisor to trustees or regulators, Joyce’s understanding of the complexities of financial and business structures and her experience with out-of-court resolutions as well as litigation at the trial through appellate levels enables her to provide critical strategic advice from the boardroom to the courtroom to a broad spectrum of clients at every stage of the business cycle including directors and officers of companies in crisis. A pragmatic problem-solver, Joyce uses her cross-disciplinary legal skills to meet the daily business needs of her clients and to help reshape their future. Joyce has significant transactional and litigation experience representing all constituents in distressed real estate settings including lenders, borrowers and investors covering every asset class from multi-family to office to shopping centers, in work-out and in bankruptcy.
Joyce is frequently invited to lecture before national and international trade groups on restructuring and commercial law issues and has published in regional and national publications on these issues. She has testified before Congress on key legislation in the restructuring industry. She recently served as a member of the Maryland Commercial Receivership Committee that drafted the Maryland Commercial Receivership Act and testified on behalf of passage of the Act before both Houses of the Maryland General Assembly. Joyce has also lectured and written on cutting edge legal issues on blockchain technology, cryptocurrency and smart contracts.
REPRESENTATIVE MATTERS
- Appointed State court receiver under the Maryland Commercial Receivership Act to wind down client matters and business of three-affiliated law firms
- Led litigation team in obtaining recent dismissal of complex partnership accounting lawsuit and related class action in the Delaware Court Chancery
- Devised successful mediation strategy to settle multi-million-dollar D+O insurance case dispute on behalf of the insureds
- Led out-of-court refinancing and restructuring of one of the largest restaurant franchisees in the United States and advised on related partnership litigation
- Advised regulatory authority on expedited recapitalization and restructuring of entity in the financial services sector that managed billions of dollars in assets
- Represented Equity Committee in Chapter 11 case of largest mall owner and operator in the United States and spinoff of its development assets to newly created public company. The complex restructuring and successful emergence of the company resulted in over $5.6B in recovery to equity
- Negotiated successful resolution of fraudulent transfer actions against former officers and directors arising from complex multibillion-dollar LBO and IPO transactions
- Negotiated successful resolution of fraudulent transfer action against a group of affiliated real estate entities in a complex real estate exchange transaction that received funds originating in a Ponzi scheme
PRESENTATIONS
- “Digital Assets in Bankruptcy: What Every Trustee Should Know,” National Association of Bankruptcy Trustees, Annual Conference, August 18, 2023 (Presenter)
- “Digital Assets in Bankruptcy,” Maryland Bankruptcy Bar Association, Annual Conference, May 5, 2023 (Presenter)
- "Cryptocurrencies and Bankruptcies; Clarifying the Unique Legal Considerations," New Jersey State Bar Association; February 15, 2023 (Presenter)
- "Creative Exits; Why Bankruptcy is Not the Only Play," January 25, 2023; joint presentation with Eisner Amper
- “Enhancing Recovery and Minimizing Loss: Force Majeure and Business Interruption in the Age of COVID-19,” Legal Excellence Week / Maryland State Bar Association, November 10, 2020 (Presenter)
RECOGNITIONS
- Top 100 Women in Maryland, The Daily Record, 2013
- The Best Lawyers in America list, Bankruptcy and Creditor-Debtor Rights/Insolvency and Reorganization Law and Bankruptcy Litigation, 2007 to present
- Super Lawyer, Maryland Super Lawyers, 2008 to present
- “Who’s Who in Bankruptcy,” Baltimore Business Journal, 2001
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