When a shareholder petitions for dissolution, many states have statutes allowing the corporation to respond by buying out the complaining shareholder. This week’s post takes a look at several recent decisions concerning buyout elections across the country.
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shareholder oppression
When Do Disguised Dividends Add Up to Minority Shareholder Oppression?
There’s surprisingly little case law addressing disguised dividends as a basis for finding oppression of minority shareholders. This week’s New York Business Divorce looks at a recent Maryland court decision that does exactly that.
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Dueling Dissolution Petitions Beget Dissolution Without Consideration of Alternate Remedies
Can two contested dissolution petitions—one by each 50% shareholder based on the other’s alleged misconduct—yield a shortcut to uncontested dissolution? See what the Second Department has to say in this week’s post.
Continue Reading Dueling Dissolution Petitions Beget Dissolution Without Consideration of Alternate Remedies
Minority Shareholder’s Petition to Dissolve Seltzer Business Loses Its Fizz
Grandpa’s Brooklyn-based seltzer manufacturing business went flat, but his real estate investments went through the roof. This week’s New York Business Divorce features a case in which one of four third-generation owners unsuccessfully sued her brother and cousins for judicial dissolution in her quest to monetize her share of the realty’s value. …
Continue Reading Minority Shareholder’s Petition to Dissolve Seltzer Business Loses Its Fizz
Corporate Oppression Doctrine Meets Sex Discrimination: A Conversation with Professor Meredith Miller
This week’s post introduces the latest episode of the Business Divorce Roundtable podcast, featuring an interview with Professor Meredith Miller of Touro Law Center discussing her recent law review article entitled Challenging Gender Discrimination in Closely Held Firms: The Hope and Hazard of Corporate Oppression Doctrine. Please give it a listen!
Continue Reading Corporate Oppression Doctrine Meets Sex Discrimination: A Conversation with Professor Meredith Miller
A New Stile: First Department Shakes Up the Shareholder Oppression Claim
A recent First Department decision recognizing a cause of action for shareholder oppression raises big questions in the area of minority shareholders’ rights.
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This Is Not Your Father’s Brady Bunch
Father against son, half-brother against half-brother, are the players in a recent courtroom drama that unfolded in Matter of Brady v. Brady, culminating with an appellate panel’s affirmance of a lower court’s order dissolving a family-owned close corporation that owns extensive farm land in upstate New York. Find out more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Court Rejects Oppressed Shareholder’s Bid for Dissolution or Buy-Out, Finds Money Damages Sufficient
Not all misconduct by majority shareholders is worthy of dissolution or a compelled buy-out. The Court’s broad power under BCL 1104-a to craft appropriate remedies also includes the power to award money damages, and dissolution may not be appropriate where the alleged shareholder oppression was a discrete, one-time transaction.
Continue Reading Court Rejects Oppressed Shareholder’s Bid for Dissolution or Buy-Out, Finds Money Damages Sufficient
How Not to Start a Corporate Dissolution Proceeding
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, a would-be dissolution petitioner just could not catch a break in a series of procedural losses emanating out of Bronx County Supreme Court. …
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Minority Shareholder Oppression in the #MeToo Era
You won’t want to miss this week’s New York Business Divorce featuring a recent decision in which the court found minority shareholder oppression based on “disrespectful and unfairly disproportionate treatment of a female shareholder by the male majority in a closely held corporation.”…
Continue Reading Minority Shareholder Oppression in the #MeToo Era