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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Oral Joint Ventures: The Wild West of Business Associations
Oral joint venture agreements tend to be the murkiest, easiest to allege, and difficult to disprove of all closely-held business relations. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Limo Company Shareholders Can’t Hitch a Ride in Derivative Litigation
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about the intervention rules and some of the challenges they pose for closely-held business owners hoping to intervene in derivative litigation.
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Business Divorce and Accountant Liability
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, learn how a son’s betrayal of his own mother while managing the famous Stardust Diner ensnared an accounting firm in claims of malpractice and aiding and abetting fraud for declining to inform the mother of the son’s financial misdeeds.
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Two Cases. Two Mammoth Fee Awards. Coup de Grâce or Pyrrhic Victory?
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about the grand finale conclusion of two important cases previously featured on this blog, with massive affirmed attorneys’ fee awards in both, one by statute, one by contract.
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Rare as a Dodo: Bifurcation in Business Divorce Trials
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about an exceptionally rare find: a bifurcated jury trial in a business divorce dispute.
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The Flexible “For Cause” Standard for Director and Officer Removal
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, we consider a first-in-a-generation appeals court decision affirming a lower court’s removal of a corporate officer “for cause.”
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Direct to Beneficial: Change of Corporate Ownership Structure Yields No Right to Dissent and Seek Appraisal
When a corporation disposes of “all or substantially all” assets, shareholders opposed to the transaction are entitled to dissent and demand fair value for their shares in an appraisal proceeding. Does a corporation’s transfer of its assets to another entity with retention of “beneficial” ownership trigger the statutory right to dissent and seek fair value? Learn the answer in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Parallel Business and Matrimonial Divorce Proceedings
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, we consider the problem of concurrent, overlapping business and marital dissolution proceedings, including a small but growing body of case law addressing how to prioritize one over the other. For judges and lawyers accustomed to commercial courts exercising their jurisdictional powers broadly, the result may be surprising.
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“Irreparable Harm” and Injunctions in Close Business Owner Disputes
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about some of the many ways courts find “irreparable harm” warranting injunctive relief in business divorce disputes.
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