New York case law concerning shareholder rights to inspect books and records of foreign business entities is far from settled. This week’s New York Business Divorce features two recent decisions in books and records cases involving a Delaware corporation and a Nevada LLC, with mixed results.
Continue Reading Foreign Affairs of the Books and Records Kind
The relative simplicity of a books and records demand can be disarming. But books and records demands sometimes raise critical issues that can dramatically alter the case going forward.
Continue Reading Proceed with Caution: Strategy Considerations Before Making a Books and Records Demand
This weeks New York Business Divorce proudly presents the 13th annual edition of Summer Shorts featuring brief commentary on five recent decisions of interest in business divorce cases in the New York courts.
Continue Reading Summer Shorts: Equitable Contribution, Stock Redemption, and Other Recent Decisions of Interest
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 what he described as “the aftermath of what had been an amicable business divorce,” New York County Commercial Division Justice Joel Cohen discusses several interesting and novel limitations on New York’s cause of action for an equitable accounting.
Continue Reading But What of the Equitable Accounting?
This week’s post considers a duo of recent decisions concerning disputes between LLC members over the terms of their operating agreement. In the first case, the court considered whether to enforce an operating agreement as written despite evidence that the parties actually intended a different deal. In the second, the court considered whether to enforce an operating agreement where its buyout terms were grossly unfair. The cases’ different outcomes highlight the outer limits of the parties’ freedom of contract in LLC operating agreements.
Continue Reading The Operating Agreement Controls, Unless Public Policy Says Otherwise
Shareholders considering exercising their right to inspect the corporation’s books and records–particularly in the context of a valuation proceeding under BCL 1118 or 623–would be wise to consider Justice Platkin’s recent primer on different inspection rights and their correspondingly different scopes, conditions precedent, and required justifications.
Continue Reading Justice Platkin’s Primer on Shareholders’ Inspection Rights
Earlier this month the Connecticut Supreme Court handed down an important, first impression decision construing RULLCA’s provision granting members of manager-managed LLCs the right to inspect books and records. Read more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading The Nutmeg State Out Front on Member Inspection Rights Under RULLCA
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
A bidding war 20 years ago over the purchase of maid’s quarters in a ritzy Park Avenue co-op. A series of co-op board rejections of a shareholder’s proposed sale of his apartment. A recent court decision denying a books-and-records petition. What’s the connection? Find out in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Court Bounces Books-and-Records Petition in Feud Over Park Avenue Co-op Board’s Rejection of Prospective Purchasers