Bankrupt retailers play the get out of lease card

U.S. retailers filing for Chapter 11 are using the protections offered by bankruptcy proceedings to get out of long-term lease obligations with landlords. “This is now black-letter law — a debtor can cram down a landlord,” said Melanie Cyganowski, a former bankruptcy judge who’s now a partner at law firm Otterbourg PC. “If this becomes a tsunami of retailers rejecting their leases, it’s going to trigger another part of the sea change — the mortgages held by the landlords.”