Coalinga Regional Medical Center

UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT

EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

FRESNO DIVISION 3 In re ) Case No. 18-13677-B-9 ) COALINGA REGIONAL MEDICAL ) DC No. WW-14 ) CENTER, a California local ) health care district, ) 7 ) ) Debtor. ) )

MEMORANDUM DECISION

11 12 INTRODUCTION Creditor’s committees play valuable roles in chapters 11 and 9 reorganization dramas. They can be inconvenient antagonists for certain debtors trying to emerge at play’s end fully reorganized with new funds from a powerful secured creditor. They can be protagonists opposing strong constituencies in a herculean battle for the debtor’s existence. This dispute is not about those roles. This is about how the committee’s role is introduced. Here the United States trustee for Region 17 (“UST”) appointed a committee of unsecured creditors (“Committee”) under authority UST purportedly has under 11 U.S.C. § 1102(a)(1) but the debtor, a rural hospital district, opposes the appointment contending UST did not have that…