I've been talking to bankruptcy lawyers recently, trying to understand the rules of bankruptcy, and whether our listener Mandy Dalton, who is a clown, will get paid the $200 she was owed when the giant mall owner General Growth Properties filed for Chapter 11.

It's been confusing because one big bankruptcy in the news, Chrysler, hasn't exactly been following the traditional rules.

That's why Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put the deal on hold yesterday with minutes ticking down on the clock.

 

NPR's Frank Langfitt reported on this weeks ago.

In that story Richard Mourdock, the state treasurer of Indiana, made the argument now being made to the Supreme Court. (Mourdock oversees police and teacher pension funds that lent Chrysler money.)

"It's wrong, that people can just suddenly, arbitrarily change 100 years of American legal practice to say secured creditor doesn't mean secured creditor."

Jay Westbrook, a professor of bankruptcy law at the University of Texas, offered this context.

"When the bankruptcy process is being used to try to save a business, the courts and the parties have to accept a kind of rough justice.... The classic example we always use in bankruptcy is that the debtor has this shipload of raw fish, right? And we've got to move quickly before the fish spoil or they'll be no value for anybody"

In this case it's not saving fish, it's saving the economy.

We'll have to see what Justice Ginsburg thinks.

A lawyer for Chrysler has argued that the company is losing $100 million for each day it's stuck in bankruptcy.