When U.S. District Judge David Novak, in a strongly worded opinion last week, scrapped third-party releases from a former retailer’s Chapter 11 plan, he simultaneously called out another controversial feature of corporate bankruptcy law: forum shopping.

In his ruling on Ascena Retail Group’s plan, Novak wrote that even though the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit disfavors granting provisions that release non-debtor parties from liability, the bankruptcy court for the Richmond Division of the Eastern District of Virginia routinely approves them anyway. Large companies take advantage of that by choosing to file cases there using permissive bankruptcy venue selection rules, Novak said.