Hechinger Investment Company of Delaware, Inc. v. Universal Forest Products, Inc., Nos. 06-2166, 06-2229, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 13155 (3rd Cir. June 7, 2007).   The issue was whether preferential transfers may be protected by the contemporaneous exchange defense of §547(c)(1).  Bob Eisenbach comments on the case at the Business Bankruptcy Blog, so I will just include a couple excerpts from the opinion.

The Bankruptcy Court found that the disputed transfers were not intended by the parties to be contemporaneous exchanges because the transfers were credit transactions. In reaching this result, the Court relied upon several factually distinguishable cases, none of which stand for the proposition that parties can never intend credit transactions to be contemporaneous exchanges under § 547(c)(1)(A). We disagree with the Bankruptcy Court’s conclusion. Indeed, it  would appear that § 547(c)(1) covers little other than credit transactions. The § 547(c)(1) defense applies only to transfers that the debtor has shown are payments on an “antecedent debt” under § 547(b). See 11 U.S.C. § 547(b)(2) (definition of  avoidable transfers). If there is no delay between when the debt arises and payment of the obligation, then the transfer is outside the scope of § 547(b), and § 547(c)(1) is not implicated. The existence of a delay between the creation of a debt and its payment is a hallmark of a credit relationship, which is, by definition, a relationship in which the creditor entrusts the debtor with goods without present payment. OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (2d ed. 1989) (defining “credit” as “[t]rust or confidence in a buyer’s ability and intention to pay at some future time, exhibited by entrusting him with goods, etc. without present payment.”). …

The inquiry still remains: even if a credit relationship was intended, was it nonetheless their intent that the ongoing payments would be contemporaneous exchanges for new value? A court may find the parties intended a contemporaneous exchange for new value even when the transaction is styled as a “credit” transaction. See In re Payless Cashways, Inc., 306 B.R. 243 (8th Cir. BAP 2004), aff’d, 394 F.3d 1082 (8th Cir. 2005). The question is one of intent, and although a delay between the incurrence of the debt and its payment can evidence that the exchange was not intended to be contemporaneous, the passage of time does not necessarily negate intent. In In re Payless Cashways, for example, the debtor generally paid the creditor for specific shipments some time after the goods were shipped, but before or at the time that the shipments arrived at the debtor’s facility. Id. at 247. The court concluded that the parties intended the transfers to be part of a contemporaneous exchange for new value. The court noted that the debtor and creditor agreed to credit terms that would match up the date of the actual delivery of the goods purchased by the debtor with the date of the debtor’s obligation to wire payment for the goods to the creditor. Id. at 246. The court also put great weight on the fact that the contracts were “destination contracts,” meaning that the creditor could have refused to deliver the goods if the debtor had failed to make payment before the delivery arrived. Id. at 250, 254.