This week’s New York Business Divorce highlights two thought-provoking law review articles by Professors Meredith Miller and Ann Lipton making the case for expanding common-law doctrine and legislature remedies for discrimination against women owners of closely held business entities.
Continue Reading It’s Time to Address Sex Discrimination Against Women Owners of Closely Held Companies, Say These Two Law Professors

A pair of significant appellate decisions last week address the courts’ remedial powers concerning co-op and condominium board elections and access to the shareholder list for purposes of campaigning for board seats. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Appellate Rulings Endorse Courts’ Broad Remedial Powers Over Condo and Co-op Board Elections

In a case featuring your authors as counsel for the prevailing parties, NY County Commercial Division Justice Robert Reed enforces the buy-sell provision of a corporation’s shareholders agreement triggered by the shareholders’ petition for dissolution.
Continue Reading Look Before You Leap: Buy-Sell Agreements Triggered by a Petition for Dissolution

In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about a recent appeals court decision in which an elderly male business founder alleged he was ousted from the company and his reputation smeared based upon false allegations of sexual harassment allegedly solicited by a hostile male CEO. Do these allegations equate to a viable claim for breach of fiduciary duty against the CEO? Find out in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading #MeToo and Business Divorce: The Flip Side

A corporation and a dissident shareholder enter into agreement where the dissident shareholder agrees to receive regular payments in exchange for staying away from the Company’s business. What happens when the outspoken shareholder dies? In Stile v C-Air Customhouse Brokers-Forwards, Inc., Index No. 656575/2020 [Sup Ct, New York County 2021], the New York County Supreme Court declined to dismiss a suit by the estate of a shareholder subject to a stay away settlement agreement on the grounds that the stay away obligations did not expressly apply to the shareholder’s successors.
Continue Reading Stay Away Settlement Between Closely-Held Corporation and Dissident Shareholder Goes Away Upon Shareholder’s Death

In a decision of apparent first impression last month, Justice Nancy Bannon of the Manhattan Supreme Court issued an injunction against the holding of a corporate election under BCL § 619. Minority shareholders facing an anticipated election called by a rival majority would be wise to consider the roadmap to injunctive relief charted by the plaintiffs here. 
Continue Reading Stop the Vote: Injunction Halts Shareholders Meeting Pursuant to Courts’ Broad Power to Review Corporate Elections