The court was responding to a question from a New York federal appeals court relating to a dispute between creditors of General Motors (GM.N) before its 2009 bankruptcy and its former lender, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N). The issue relates to GM’s insolvency, in which its healthy assets were sold to the new General Motors Co, while the rest were liquidated for the benefit of unsecured creditors. GM’s unsecured creditors’ committee claimed JPMorgan and other holders of a syndicated $1.5 billion term loan extinguished their lien on GM’s assets, freeing up the assets to unsecured creditors.