> you have posited a theoretical framework for how a bankruptcy court theoretically should work. None of this is how bankruptcy court actually works

Literally started by saying I'm holding judgement until reading the opinion.

My point is simply that if the reason the judge raised for re-starting the process is solely around the bids being sealed, they're wrong in a provable way.

Oh, it's not that at all. The problem with auction procedures in this case wasn't the actual auction methodology, but the lack of notice and the difficulty of submitting a bid. In any case, a judge does make the decisions in a bankruptcy court when the parties disagree about things. In this case, the creditors are not in agreement that this was okay.

A sealed-bid auction is a bit non-standard in a bankruptcy, but there should be no problem if all the bids get revealed post-facto. I wouldn't be surprised if this was mentioned in the opinion because it doesn't help you say that the auction was fair in light of everything else (if you're going to do non-standard stiff, do it in a very clean-looking way).

> roblem with auction procedures in this case wasn't the actual auction methodology, but the lack of notice and the difficulty of submitting a bid

Which would make sense. That's not what the article quotes as the judge's reason (nor what you've said).

The quote in the article criticises sealed bids. That's mind-blowingly wrong to the point of having substance on appeal. It's so wrong I expressed scepticism it's actually the case, scepticism based on experience evaluating bankruptcy claims.

Yeah, the article is incorrect about that (like I said, sealed bids are very unusual in bankruptcy auctions, but the actual opinion cites the other stuff), and when I said that the auction procedure was farcical, I did not mean that the underlying algorithm of the auction was wrong, but that the procedures run by the auctioneer were awful.