Chrissey L. Barba focuses on commercial lending with an emphasis on loan workouts. She represents lenders and creditors in all stages of loan documentation, debt restructuring, enforcement, and related litigation.
Chrissey's experience documenting and restructuring commercial loans ranges from simple real estate loans to complex facilities of all types. She has counseled clients in restructuring distressed credits involving multiple obligors, derivative transactions, borrowing base facilities, participation loans, mezzanine loans, unique or restricted-market collateral, forbearance agreements, intercreditor agreements, and note sales.
Chrissey is equally skilled in federal and state litigation, including the successful defense of lender liability claims and frequent prosecution of commercial foreclosures, replevin actions, Uniform Commercial Code proceedings, receivership actions, confessions of judgment, execution and sale of real and personal property, and related actions involving discovery and recovery of assets in federal, state, and bankruptcy courts.
Chrissey is also experienced in bankruptcy practice and has represented debtors, creditors, and trustees in complex Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 proceedings in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the District of New Jersey.
Representative Matters
Litigation Matters:
- Representation of a national bank in the foreclosure, sheriff’s sale and subsequent quiet title action necessary to take possession of a large warehouse and office facility in Atlantic County, New Jersey. The property was comprised of several parcels, some non-contiguous, owned by multiple entities, and required post-foreclosure quiet title litigation to reform legal descriptions.
- Representation of an equipment finance and leasing company in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding involving complex issues of cash collateral and intercreditor agreements, leading to complete repayment and satisfactory disposition of all collateral
- Representation of a federal bank in the judicial tax sale of its collateral, a historic and high-profile property in the Lehigh Valley, including extensive negotiations with the taxing authorities and municipality, recovery of possession and related actions necessary to secure and preserve the historic building
- Representation of a national bank in defending, preserving and enforcing its first priority lien on receivables and cash collateral against competing garnishments by executing judgment creditors and a subsequent Chapter 11 bankruptcy
- Regularly represents lenders in obtaining and successfully defending confessed judgments against petitions to open or strike filed by borrowers and guarantors in the Court of Common Pleas, and in appeals to the Superior Court
Transactional Matters:
- Representation of a national bank in successfully negotiating, documenting and completing an out-of-court asset sale and liquidation by its borrowers in the energy industry, enabling the client to recover more than $10 million in defaulted debt while avoiding costly litigation, receivership and/or bankruptcy proceedings by its borrowers
- Representation of a commercial lender in documenting and modifying numerous credit facilities of over $40 million in the aggregate in 2019 alone, including working capital and equipment lines of credit, construction loans and term debt
- Regular representation of national and federal banks in the sale and disposition of tens of millions of dollars in bank-owned real estate throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania – including properties where she handled the foreclosure or otherwise represented the bank in its acquisition
- Regular representation of commercial lenders in loan sales, including the sale of single loans in a workout context as well as the sale of large portfolios of multiple and diverse loans (secured, unsecured, some in active litigation or bankruptcy, some with unusual collateral or collateral spanning across multiple states)
Judicial Internships/Externships
Judicial extern, Hon. Jack Sabatino, Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, 2007
Judicial intern, Hon. Mary L. Cooper, U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, summer 2005