Two key Democratic lawmakers yesterday became the latest federal officials seeking to intervene in a Supreme Court case that could determine whether investors in Enron and other fraud-ridden companies can recover money from third parties, the Washington Post reported today. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) asked to file court papers that would support shareholders’ right to sue bankers, lawyers, accountants and business partners who knowingly took part in fraud schemes but who may not have made public statements about them at the time. Earlier this year, the five-member Securities and Exchange Commission voted to support shareholders in the case. The Treasury Department and President Bush opposed the move, however, arguing that it would expose businesses to too many risks and put U.S. companies at a disadvantage to foreign rivals.

Bally Total Fitness Holding Corp. said on Friday that it has received the required number of votes in favor of the chapter 11 reorganization plan, Reuters reported on Friday. The company also said that it was unable to reach an agreement on an alternative restructuring plan that a group of shareholders had proposed earlier in July. The shareholders — four private equity funds — have outlined a different restructuring plan for the ailing company and had agreed to complete due diligence by July 20, the Chicago-based company said earlier. Bally said health club operations and memberships will remain unaffected through the process.

Bankrupt book marketer Advanced Marketing Services Inc. has asked a bankruptcy court for an order throwing out more than $18 million in allegedly duplicate claims by creditors, Bankruptcy Law360 reported yesterday. The company, which filed for chapter 11 in December 2006 and is operating as debtor in possession thanks to a $75 million loan from Wells Fargo, said that the claims by scores of independent publishers were either filed against the wrong debtor, were identical to other claims or were redundant. Many of the claims under dispute, the company argues, have been wrongly filed against AMS and should be reclassified as claims against subsidiary PGW. The rest should be disallowed in their entirety, having been asserted before or amended, and consequently superseded by subsequent claims, the company said.

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes fell in June for a fourth consecutive month, further evidence that housing troubles are far from over, according to the Associated Press yesterday. The realtors said that sales of existing homes dropped by 3.8 percent in June, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.75 million units. That is the slowest sales pace since November 2002, and the decline was about twice what had been expected. The median price of an existing home edged up to $230,100, 0.3 percent more than a year ago. For June, the median price of a single-family home rose by 0.1 percent and the price of a condominium increased by 2.6 percent when compared with the period a year ago.

Tweeter Home Entertainment Group has postponed until September a court hearing on bankruptcy bonuses for top executives amid allegations from former employees who say they were induced by false promises of extra pay to stay at the company, the Associated Press reported yesterday.  The electronics retailer was sold this month to Schultze Asset Management Inc., a hedge fund, for $38 million in cash in a “going-concern” deal designed to preserve part of the business. Top executives and other insiders of the company say they’re entitled to a percentage of the sale proceeds, a position that has drawn criticism from the U.S. trustee monitoring the case. A hearing on the bid for top executive bonuses was slated for tomorrow, but has been rescheduled for Sept. 5, according to a document Tweeter filed Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del.

Tupac Shakur’s mother is seeking to prevent his former label, Death Row Records Inc., from selling the late rapper’s unreleased recordings as part of a bankruptcy settlement, the Associated Press reported today. Afeni Shakur sought an injunction in federal bankruptcy court Friday claiming Death Row was attempting to sell Shakur material that belonged to the rapper’s estate. Unreleased recordings should have been turned over to the estate as part of a 1997 agreement with the record label, said attorney Donald N. David, who represents the estate. Afeni Shakur and the company she established, Amur Entertainment, requested an injunction after the label failed to confirm the songs would not be included in the bankruptcy settlement, David said. The court was expected to consider the request within a month when it decides whether to permit the label to release an album with the unreleased tracks to help pay off its debts.

Although SunRocket was tiny by the standards of the telecommunications industry, it has ensured itself a place in the history of the digital era by being the first significant Internet telephone provider to go out of business, the New York Times reported today. Its collapse raises questions about what responsibility such companies have to their customers — and about how they should be regulated, given how essential many people consider phone service to be. The SunRocket meltdown was further complicated because many customers paid $199 up-front for a year of unlimited service, and it is not clear if any of them will receive a refund. Standard telephone companies are required to give customers notice if they plan to stop service. However, companies like SunRocket that use the infrastructure of the Internet to transmit calls do not have to give such notice. Many industry analysts and former policy makers said that the absence of broad regulations was, to a large extent, desirable because it would allow the emerging Internet phone industry to develop. While these experts said that the SunRocket shutdown was clearly a big problem for customers, they said it might not justify a spate of new regulation.

In the middle of the biggest glut of condominiums in more than 30 years, Miami developers keep on building, Bloomberg News reported today. The oversupply will force prices down as much as 30 percent, the worst decline since the 1970s, and help push Florida’s economy into recession as early as October, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at West Chester, Pa.-based Moody’s Economy.com, who owns a home in Vero Beach, Fla. Thirty-seven new high-rise condos and 20,000 new units are being built in Miami’s 1,040-acre downtown, where sales fell almost 50 percent in May, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. The new units will join the 22,924 existing condos in Miami-Dade County that were for sale in April. Puig Development Group, a closely held company that converted rental apartments to condos, filed for chapter 11 protection on May 29. The Hialeah, Fla.-based Puig and its subsidiaries controlled 2,900 units in Florida, including 980 condos, worth about $210 million, said Ronald Glass of Atlanta-based GlassRatner Advisory & Capital Group LLC, CRO for the Puig properties.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox called for Congress to set new disclosure rules for municipal borrowers, saying there is an “urgent need” to improve the information investors receive, Bloomberg News reported today Cox also said yesterday that lawmakers bolster the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, which sets accounting standards for states and municipalities, by making its rules mandatory and giving it an independent source of money. Texas has allowed local governments there to ignore rules requiring them to disclose how much they expect to pay for retired workers’ health care. The SEC in March said that it was evaluating whether state and local governments should be forced to disclose more information to investors who buy the $400 billion of municipal bonds sold each year for schools, sewers and other projects. The review follows the agency’s November sanction against San Diego for inadequate disclosures made to buyers of its debt and comes as cities, towns and school districts increase their use of unregulated financial contracts such as interest rate swaps.

The legion of lawyers and financial advisers in the Refco Inc. bankruptcy case have collected $171 million in fees and expenses from the commodities broker that imploded almost two years ago, the Associated Press reported yesterday. The trading firm paid $11.1 million in the second quarter to 38 legal and business advisers, bringing the total payout so far in the case to $171 million, according to court documents filed Monday. Refco’s creditors, meanwhile, collected $2.72 billion in the second quarter, nearly double the $1.39 billion they pocketed in the first quarter, court documents show. When Refco collapsed two year ago, creditors were owed $16.8 billion. Refco filed for bankruptcy in October 2005, right after it announced that its former chief executive, Phillip Bennett, had hidden $430 million in bad debt going back to 1998. Bennett is facing trial on fraud charges and has pleaded not guilty.