Judge Christopher Lopez rejected Onset Financial’s renewed effort to exclude Mark Kirschner’s feasibility testimony, finding his experience-based assessment of claim strength, defendants’ resources, settlement prospects and procedural tools sufficiently reliable under Rule 702. The ruling leaves Kirschner’s opinion—that the litigation trust could recover approximately $2 billion by year-end 2028—in the confirmation record, while reserving its persuasive weight for closing argument. The court then closed the evidentiary record subject to unresolved deposition designations, an interrogatory response, exhibit issues and possible motions to strike, and targeted August 7 for argument, according to the confirmation-hearing recording.

The ruling removes an admissibility obstacle but leaves feasibility sharply contested. Cross-examination established that Kirschner performed no transfer-by-transfer or defendant-by-defendant analysis, had no work papers supporting the $2 billion estimate, did not independently verify the $25.4 billion aggregate outflow and did not model individual defenses or litigation costs. The plan’s confirmation case therefore advances to argument with its central recovery assumption intact but exposed to substantial weight challenges.