Distinguished Service Award

		2002 Distinguished Service Award JUDGE WILLIAM L. NORTON, JR. This year’s recipient of the Distinguished Service Award, the Honorable William L. Norton, Jr., is well known to those working in the insolvency field. It is an honor to present the American College of Bankruptcy’s Distinguished Service Award. Judge Norton has set a high standard for all of us. One would assume that the criteria for the award are based on his career. They are: significant accomplishments in improving the administration of justice in the insolvency and bankruptcy field; distinguished service consistently rendered over a considerable period of time; and a career consistent with the goals and purposes of the College. Many of us first became familiar with Judge Norton as a result of his Pine Gate decision. Matter of Pine Gate Associates, Ltd., 1976 U.S. Dist. Lexis 17366 (N.D. Ga. B. Ct. 1976). In that case, Judge Norton breathed life into a little used reorganization tool, Chapter XII of the Bankruptcy Act. As Judge Norton’s opinion noted, Chapter XII allowed the debtor to satisfy a nonrecourse, secured claim by payment in cash of the value of the collateral. This "cramdown" was described by Judge Norton rather colorfully in his opinion as "a self-evident, vivid term of immediate understanding, perhaps requiring no explanation. It creates an instant correct connotation of the involuntary administration of bad medicine upon a recalcitrant victim, the secured creditor who opposes the effects of the reorganization proceedings in the Bankruptcy Court." Id. at 9. Judge Norton has had a remarkable career and has contributed immeasurably to the integrity and standing of insolvency practitioners: Judge Norton was a Trial Attorney and Special Assistant to the United States Attorney General, Tax Division, Washington, D.C., and an Assistant Attorney General of Georgia and Chief Counsel for the Georgia Department of Revenue; He authored several ground-breaking and revolutionary decisions in the Pine Gate case and reinvigorated Chapter XII in the 1970’s when confronted with numerous Chapter XII cases in a declining Atlanta real estate market; Judge Norton was a member of the Standing Faculty of the Federal Judicial Center for the Regional Seminars for Bankruptcy Judges and Newly Appointed Judges; Judge Norton authored a small book on real property arrangements under Chapter XII of the Bankruptcy Act of 1898 and co-authored Evidence and Trials Under the Bankruptcy Act with Judge Barry Russell; Judge Norton took on the ambitious task of creating a multi-volume bankruptcy law treatise designed to compete with Colliers treatise on bankruptcy, and Norton Bankruptcy Law and Practice (2d Ed.) is up to thirteen volumes and is produced on CD Rom Lexis, CD Rom Westlaw, and On-line Westlaw; Judge Norton also created and published the Norton Adviser, a monthly newsletter, in 1982 and it is still going strong, and shortly after that he produced a one-volume Norton Handbook on Trustees, DIPs and Committees; Judge Norton also produced a two-volume pamphlet edition on the Bankruptcy Code and Bankruptcy Rules, with extensive historical comments, which were, along with a Quick Reference on Bankruptcy Code and Rules Small Pocket Edition selected by Committee of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and a Committee of the Federal Judicial Center to distribute to the federal judiciary; Judge Norton established his well-known Institutes on Bankruptcy Law to reward those contributing to his publications, and these have since developed a life of their own and are remarkable seminars given each year in Park City, Utah, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Las Vegas, Nevada; Judge Norton authored several opinions in Chapter 11 cases finding the Emergency Rule promulgated after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Northern Pipe Line case which found the Emergency Rule case unconstitutional, and in 1994, along with several other prominent bankruptcy judges, with the legal assistance of Richard Lieb’s New York law firm, initiated a lawsuit seeking to establish that the Administrative Office directive was unconstitutional; and Judge Norton, after his retirement as a Bankruptcy Judge, served as an Examiner in the UNR Industries Chapter 11 case and achieved a consensual plan which caused the U.S. Trustee in Chicago to praise Judge Norton’s services "as artfully using an iron fist and a velvet glove." I am sure many of you here this afternoon are aware of many of these accomplishments. But what you may not know is he is the primary reason you are here. In order to tell that story, I quote from Judge Chandler Watson, Jr.’s letter nominating Judge Norton for the Award. He attended the American Bar Association meeting in August 1978, in Chicago, and witnessed the discussions of the bankruptcy court jurisdiction issue and the final vote by a substantial majority of the Business Bankruptcy Committee, in favor of the Article III provisions contained in the House Bill. As did I, Bill Norton maintained that Bankruptcy Judges routinely exercised "the judicial power of the United States" and that litigants were entitled to an independent, protected Article III judge as provided to other litigants in federal courts. We regretted that the Bankruptcy Commission reversed itself on this issue, and he was very impressed with the analysis of the jurisdictional issue in the House Report. Bill Norton used to say that when he came on the bench he was shocked to observe the inferiority complex that many of the "referees-in-bankruptcy" and the bankruptcy bar seemed to harbor. He argued that the reason that the general bar sometimes had little respect for the bankruptcy bar and alleged the existence of a "bankruptcy ring" was because of the status of the appointing authority over the referees, plus the delegated jurisdictional and dual intermediate appellate system. He felt that respect for bankruptcy practice and bankruptcy lawyers among the mainstream bar and public would never receive the level that the important bankruptcy practice and very good bankruptcy lawyers deserved until the court was an Article III court. A month after the Chicago meeting he witnessed the meeting of the Delegates of the American Bar Association in Atlanta and was disappointed that they overwhelmingly rejected the recommendation of the Business Bankruptcy Committee . . . . Bill decided from the tone of the Delegates who generally disdained the quality of the bankruptcy practice that the ABA would never endorse recommendations of the Business Bankruptcy Committee on bankruptcy issues such as an Article III court that were opposed by the hierarchy of the federal judiciary. He soon started advocating an organization different from the ABA, to include all of the disciplines of the bankruptcy process with the objective to study, recommend and counsel with Congress and have more influence on bankruptcy legislation. By fall 1979 he had written a memorandum which he shared with some judicial colleagues and his Contributing Editors, including probably you, Dick Lieb, and Jonathan Landers, which outlined the purposes and objectives of a membership association which would be open to include all participants in the bankruptcy arena. The memo also proposed that whenever the membership organization attained some maturity an independent College of Bankruptcy Professionals should be organized to honor bankruptcy attorneys and others considered the most distinguished by their peers. Judge Norton served on the ABI Executive Committee for several years before becoming the third President in 1989, after his resignation as Bankruptcy Judge in 1986. At a board meeting [of the ABI] in Washington on February 3, 1989 prior to becoming President of ABI in May 1989, he was asked whether he felt that ABI was sufficiently established to begin thinking about sponsoring the college of professionals that Judge Norton had been advocating. He responded favorably, and Judge George Paine made a motion (which carried) that Bill Norton be appointed as a Committee of one to organize the College. Judge Norton already had submitted copies of By Laws of the College of Trial Lawyers and two or three more to all ABI directors for review. Subsequently, he enlarged his organizational committee and you were included in that project of developing the By Laws and launching the College. [In addition to his efforts to establish a College for the insolvency profession, Judge Norton conceived] the idea of a . . . distinguished bankruptcy service award . . . . Judge Norton, it gives me great pleasure and it is my distinct honor to award to you the American College of Bankruptcy Distinguished Service Award. You clearly deserve to enter the ranks of such distinguished recipients of this award as Professors Frank R. Kennedy and Lawrence P. King. Perhaps you had this in mind when your fertile imagination conceived of this Award!
2010		R. Neal Batson Atlanta, GA
2009		Hon. Ralph R. Mabey Salt Lake City, UT
2008		David T. Sykes, Esq. Philadelphia, PA
2007		Raymond Shapiro, Esq. Philadelphia, PA
2006		J. Ronald Trost, Esq. New York, New York
2005		Harvey R. Miller, Esq. New York, New York
2004		Jerry Patchan Cleveland, Ohio
2003		Leonard M. Rosen New York, New York
2002		Hon. William L. Norton, Jr. Gainesville, Georgia
2001		Bernard Shapiro, Esq. Los Angeles, California
2000		Gerald K. Smith, Esq. Phoenix, Arizona
1999		Judge Joe Lee Lexington, Kentucky George M. Treister, Esq. Los Angeles, California
1998		Leon S. Forman, Esq. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1997		Professor Lawrence P. King New York, New York
1996		Professor Frank R. Kennedy Ann Arbor, Michigan

• Distinguished Service Award Committee