Here is a motion filed recently in the Garden Ridge Corporation chapter 11 case that requests the Delaware bankruptcy court to transfer the case to Houston bankrupty court. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for March 17th. Although worth a shot, the motion will probably fail for the reasons discussed in this prior post. Houston attorney Kirk Kennedy filed the motion on behalf of his clients, the Fazio Family. Prior posts about Houston-based Garden Ridge are here, here and here.

The Harris County District Attorney‘s major fraud division announced in this story that it is conducting a criminal investigation into the demise of Houston-based Premiere Holdings of Texas, which promoted itself as a high-yield investment fund to prominent Houstonian investors but spiraled into bankuptcy over two years ago amid allegations of Ponzi scheme-type activity. One of the principal owners of Premiere is David Lapin, who is related to prominent Houston attorneys Jack Lapin (father) and Bobby Lapin (brother). Premiere promoted itself as a high-yield investment fund to mainly wealthy and conservative Houstonians. Indeed, Mike Richards, the former conservative talk show host on Houston conservative Christian radio station KSEV, used to promote Premiere as hot investment opportunity on his radio show. The Premiere case involves some of the best attorneys in Houston’s business litigation bar, so the D.A.’s investigation into Premiere could generate some interesting sparks. Stay tuned.