Basically, the company had to pay for its own buyout when private equity firms KKL, Vornado, and Bain bought the company for $6.6 billion, mostly with loans.
Because the company then had to pay off those extreme loans, they were forced to sell off their assets and property, which they leased back from the very private equity firms that now owned them.
The same thing happened more recently with Red Lobster and JoAnn Fabrics.
The very first words of US law:
1 U.S. Code § 1 - Words denoting number, gender, and so forth
…the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;
Okay? That’s a definition that only has scope within that specific document and those it governs. Plus, it’s a definition of two entirely different words.