The Equipment Leasing and Finance Association’s annual Legal Forum to be held May 1-3 in Washington, D.C. features a “Legal Update” on recent noteworthy cases and an agenda packed with a wide range of topics from workouts to workplace issues that arise in managing the equipment finance business.

Marc Hamroff, managing partner of Moritt Hock & Hamroff (MH&H) and a panelist in the Legal Update session, said they will cover many new cases, including two that provide lessons learned since 2020: (1) the Texas Bankruptcy Court December 2021 decision in Bailey Tool & Manufacturing to share takeaways in avoiding lender control over a debtor’s business while navigating a distressed loan workout; and (2) the Shelbourne BRF LLC series of cases arising in the New York State Courts in 2020 and 2021 that developed parameters around foreclosure sales during the pandemic and through the emergence from pandemic restrictions.

Julia Gavrilov and Robert S. Cohen, each a partner in MH&H’s Secured Lending, Equipment and Transportation Finance Practice and frequent industry presenters, are also serving on panels.

Gavrilov’s session on diversity, equity and inclusion will cover, among other things, the potential legal ramifications facing companies that do not commit to diversity. She recently spoke on this topic at the National Equipment Finance Association’s Finance Summit in March. “Regulators and investors are already prodding companies to make voluntary disclosures detailing data in their corporate diversity profiles,” Gavrilov notes.

Cohen’s panel will cover legal issues in e-leasing that can be avoided, most significantly what happens when an e-document is signed by all parties and then not properly placed in an e-vault. The panel will also provide an overview of the types of e-transactions in use and a brief refresher and background on the use and implementation of e-transactions for those who are new to e-leasing.

Other sessions will address cross-border transactions, the Uniform Commercial Code, and emerging technology. Among the roundtable sessions are two that focus on specific markets, the air-rail-marine sector and, separately, motor vehicles.

This is the 50th year of the Legal Forum and the first one in-person since the pandemic.