Daniel J. Bussel is a member of Klee Tuchin Bogdanoff & Stern LLP, and Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law.
Mr. Bussel received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and law degree from the Stanford Law School where he was the Nathan Abbott Scholar and a member of Order of the Coif. After graduating law school, he served as a law clerk for the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor and the Honorable Stephen G. Breyer. He then specialized in bankruptcy reorganization law at O'Melveny & Myers where he represented trustees, secured and unsecured creditors, licensees and acquirers of assets from bankruptcy estates.
At the UCLA School of Law, Mr. Bussel teaches basic and advanced courses in bankruptcy, commercial law, contracts, and professional responsibility. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Miami Law School and Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. Mr. Bussel has published numerous scholarly articles, lectured on bankruptcy law and related subjects extensively, and authored leading casebooks in the fields of bankruptcy and contract law.
Mr. Bussel’s practice includes representation of debtors (Jefferson County Alabama, Thorpe Insulation Co., Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., Pure Beauty Inc., Fountain View, Inc.), bondholder committees, bankruptcy trustees and creditors' committees. His recent creditor representations include Perry Capital, D.E. Shaw Laminar Portfolios, Tennenbaum Capital Partners, Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, Fortress Investment Group, Ableco Finance, and Paramount/Viacom. In addition to the debtor representations listed above, Mr. Bussel has represented key constituents in the recent chapter 11 cases of Lehman Brothers Holdings, IndyMac Bancorp, Washington Mutual, American Suzuki, PG&E National Energy Group, Werner Ladder, ZiLOG, Inc., Malden Mills, Sunterra, Read-Rite, Strouds, and Global Health Sciences, as well as in many out-of-court restructuring and advisory matters. Mr. Bussel has briefed and/or argued appeals before the Supreme Court of the United States, the Ninth Circuit, the Tenth Circuit, the Eleventh Circuit and the Delaware Supreme Court as well as in numerous district court proceedings. Published opinions in which Mr. Bussel served as appellate counsel include Stern v. Marshall (US Supreme Court); In re Penrod (US Supreme Court) (on cert.); Continental Insurance Co. v. Thorpe Insulation Co. (9th Cir. and US Supreme Court) (on cert.); and Motor Vehicle Insurance Co. v. Thorpe Insulation Co. (9th Cir.).
Mr. Bussel has been engaged as an expert consultant and witness in the state and federal courts in California, the New York Supreme Court, the Oregon Public Utilities Commission, the ICC International Court of Arbitration (London) and the Tokyo District Court in a variety of matters related to bankruptcy and commercial law including jurisdictional issues, fraudulent transfer litigation, enforcement of guarantees and other suretyship arrangements and assumption and assignment of executory contracts and leases.
Mr. Bussel is a past President and serves on the Board of Governors of the Financial Lawyers Conference of Los Angeles. He is a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy and serves on the Advisory Board of the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review. He has participated on committees and task forces for the American Bar Association, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California. Mr. Bussel also serves on the mediation panels for both the Bankruptcy Court and District Court for the Central District of California. He is admitted to practice before all state and federal courts in California, the District of Arizona, and the Courts of Appeals for the First, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh Circuits and the Supreme Court of the United States.