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Did the Appellate Division, Second Department, throw us a curve ball in its decision last week in Mace v. Tunick, reinstating an LLC dissolution complaint based on its finding that the operating agreement’s purpose clause, authorizing the LLC to engage in “any lawful business,” did not set forth “any particular purpose”? Learn more about this important development in this week’s New York Business Divorce. …
Continue Reading Does Your LLC Agreement Have a Purposeless Purpose Clause?

New York’s highest court last week agreed to hear an appeal in a case that raises important issues concerning wrongful dissolution, damages, and valuation discounts under New York’s partnership law. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Court of Appeals to Decide Controversial Partnership Dissolution Case

This 6th annual edition of Summer Shorts presents brief commentary on three decisions of interest in business divorce cases, including a dispute among LLP partners over the reduction of one partner’s interest; disqualification of counsel in an LLC dissolution case; and a Delaware books-and-records case involving phantom stock. …
Continue Reading Summer Shorts: Partnership Interest Reduction and Other Recent Decisions of Interest

A minority partner paid a heavy price for wrongfully dissolving the partnership in an appellate ruling last week applying a 66% minority discount — along with marketability and goodwill discounts and offsets for damages — to the value of the partner’s interest. It’s in this week’s New York Business Divorce. …
Continue Reading Partner Who Wrongfully Dissolved Partnership Hit With Whopping 66% Minority Discount

The Appellate Division, Second Department, last week decided three appeals in the same business divorce case, addressing important issues concerning claims for LLC dissolution, equitable buyout, and use of company monies for legal fees defending dissolution proceedings. This week’s New York Business Divorce has the story.
Continue Reading One Parking Lot, Two Brothers, Three Decisions

An appellate ruling last week in Zwarycz v, Marnia Construction, Inc. illustrates the heavy price of neglect to issue stock certificates or follow other formalities in closely held corporations — a price paid in years of litigation over stock ownership. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce. …
Continue Reading Fifty Years a Stockholder, Six Years to Prove it in Court

A Brooklyn appellate panel last week provided more fodder for the DLOM debate that’s been in the legal news of late, upholding a 0% DLOM in a fair value appraisal of a membership interest in a real estate holding company. It’s featured in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Appellate Court Upholds 0% Marketability Discount in LLC Fair Value Case

In the face of Second Department case law rejecting subject-matter jurisdiction over statutory dissolution claims involving foreign business entities, the plaintiffs in Bonavita v Savenergy, Inc. argued to Justice Timothy Driscoll that he nonetheless could hear a claim for common-law dissolution of a Delaware corporation. Did they succeed? Find out in this week’s New York Business Divorce. …
Continue Reading Court Declines Jurisdiction Over Claim for Common-Law Dissolution of Delaware Corporation