This week’s New York Business Divorce focuses on the legal hurdles litigants and their counsel must overcome to discover an opponent or non-party’s confidential tax records and information.
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Check Your Footing: $36 Million Money Judgment Eviscerated in Brutal Appellate Standing Loss
Imagine litigating a case for nearly eight years to an eight figure money judgment, only to lose on appeal for lack of standing. It happened in our final New York Business Divorce story of 2024.
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Fact Issues and Credibility Determinations on Injunction Motions
To what extent do sharply disputed issues of fact preclude injunctive relief in business divorce cases? Read about an illuminating decision from Albany County Commercial Division Justice Richard Platkin addressing this question in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Is an LLC Bound by its Own Operating Agreement?
This week in New York Business Divorce, read how a New York LLC can successfully evade an arbitration provision in its own operating agreement.
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Can Post-Valuation Date Historical Performance Trump Pre-Valuation Date Financial Projections?
Under traditional principles of business valuation, courts are generally expected to eschew metrics post-dating the valuation date. But often, litigants hoping to either increase or decrease an entity’s valuation ask courts to consider post-valuation date events or financial performance as affirmatory or disaffirmatory of financial projections or assumptions made before or as of the valuation date. Sometimes, litigants succeed in that endeavor. Read about a recent example in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Bookkeeper Liability? It’s a Real Thing
For burned business owners, the list of potential litigation targets just got a little bigger. Bookkeepers are now in the crosshairs. Read about it in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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A Gift Horse with Rotten Teeth: When Equity Bequests Violate Transfer Restrictions or Buy-Sell Agreements
This week in New York Business Divorce, read about yet another attempted bequest in a last will and testament of a valuable business interest foiled by a buy-sell provision in the entity’s contract. We’ll summarize some of the rules of law courts use to resolve the conflict.
Continue Reading A Gift Horse with Rotten Teeth: When Equity Bequests Violate Transfer Restrictions or Buy-Sell Agreements
Breach of Fiduciary Duty: A More “Lenient Standard” for Damages?
A torturously prolonged, 28-year litigation culminates in an important appellate decision affording plaintiffs suing for breach of fiduciary duty a more “lenient standard” for proving damages. Will other appeals courts do the same? Read about it in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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“Prevailing Party” Attorneys’ Fee Provisions
Contracts with “prevailing party” fee-shifting provisions offer the tantalizing, coveted prospect of the winner recovering attorneys’ fees from the loser in legal disputes over the contract’s breach. But when the parties bombard each other with legal claims, and neither recovers on much (or any) of them, the hard question of whether either side (or any side) “prevailed” can lead to years of litigation within litigation. Read more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Dollars, Donuts, and Buy-Sell Options
This week’s New York Business Divorce touches on familiar themes. A bitter father-son dispute. A disagreement over whether to sell or keep the business. An expulsion and compelled buyout. Throw in a fistfight, criminal charges, and an alleged extortion in exchange for reduced criminal charges, and you’ve got one heck of a sordid story. There’s even a legal lesson about the importance of strict compliance with closing deadlines in buy-sell option agreements.
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