Allen is a corporate, commercial, and bankruptcy attorney who serves as outside general and special counsel to public and private manufacturing, trading, lending, and service providers. His corporate and commercial career has as its foundation many years of intensive representations of creditors, debtors, committees, and trustees in federal bankruptcy and state law debtor-creditor matters.
Allen understands that representing a distressed entity in workout, forbearance, reorganization, wind-down, or liquidation requires certain confidence, experience, and mettle. These same characteristics are required when representing companies in strategic growth phases, commercial negotiations, and civil litigation when necessary. His extensive experience counseling clients at all stages enables him to provide fast and efficient advice on the executive level. Allen enjoys knowing and understanding clients’ businesses—what they do and how they do it—which reveals potential problems and helps to map a path toward greater success for the client.
In the Chancery and Law Divisions, Allen has represented corporate and individual plaintiffs and defendants in breach of contract, common-law fraud, and breach of fiduciary duty matters; employment cases; and all manner of commercial actions. In the bankruptcy courts, he has represented a multitude of corporate bankruptcy creditors on administrative, secured, priority, and unsecured claims, with many of these matters involving complex issues of securitization, priority, setoff, recoupment, reclamation, and possession of collateral. These matters frequently involve related issues of purportedly preferential or fraudulent transfers, demands for turnover, alleged unauthorized pre- or post-petition transfers, assumption and rejection, and the like. Issues of guaranty and indemnity, whether as to principals, corporations, or construction and insurance entities, have likewise proliferated in recent years.
Allen has also represented creditors in numerous health care–related bankruptcies, including in most of the major hospital bankruptcies filed in New Jersey over many years. In bankruptcy and insolvency matters, his ethos for creditors is to minimize costs while maximizing leverage and recovery. The ability to achieve this, time and again, is the product of efficiency, hard work, and experience. That same ethos characterizes his efforts in commercial and transactional matters.