The bankrupt unit in court documents called Knoll's team "critical to the debtor's success."
Knoll's team was supposed to complete their investigation by reviewing and incorporating the examiner's conclusions into a revised bankruptcy plan. The bankrupt operating unit's special governance committee was also expected to use the results of the investigation to help prove the plan was fair and reasonable to any hold-out creditors.
The Caesar's bankruptcy has pitted some of the most aggressive investors on Wall Street against each other. Junior bondholders, led by the Appaloosa Management hedge fund, want to show that parent company Caesar's private equity owners, Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital Management, benefited from the alleged asset-stripping.
Apollo and TPG have denied these allegations.
Knoll, a former president of the American Bankruptcy Institute who billed $950 an hour on the Caesars case, was involved with Lazar when she was hired in August 2014, according to court records.
In February 2015, a month after the unit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Knoll filed a declaration with the court listing potential conflicts of interest as part of the court process for approving her team's employment. However, she did not disclose the relationship with Lazar, who was by then officially representing Caesars.
Then, at a bankruptcy conference at a Michigan resort, the pair had "a chance encounter in a social setting" with an attorney for the Office of the U.S. Trustee, a government watchdog that polices conflicts in bankruptcy, according to court documents.
About two weeks later, Knoll's employer, the now-defunct Mesirow Financial Consulting, disclosed the relationship to the court and said Knoll had been removed from the case.
That prompted a six-month investigation by the U.S. Trustee, which resulted in a reduced fee request for Knoll's team and new disclosures about the handling of Knoll's potential conflict.
Still, at the March 16 hearing, called to consider the fee request, Goldgar said, "We'll never know for sure what happened here."