Consider the case of the LLC member who failed to meet a capital call and consequently was forced to sell its minority LLC interest valued by the managing member at $1.7 million, to the managing member in exchange for a non-recourse promissory note with no maturity date and no payments unless the former interest generates after-tax distributions, of which there were none to date. Found out how the courts ruled in this week’s NYBD post.
The oft litigated art of the capital call takes center stage once again in this week’s post, featuring two appellate rulings handed down last week, one sustaining and one invalidating a capital call.
Continue Reading Lessons on the Art of Drafting Capital Call Provisions
This week’s post unpacks a novel estoppel defense that put the brakes on the manager’s right to make a mandatory capital call.
Continue Reading Capital Call Cancelled: A Fairness Defense to the Majority’s Mandatory Capital Call
This week’s New York Business Divorce post concerns the impact that estoppel can play in determining the all-important question of, “Am I a member of the LLC?”
Continue Reading To be or Not to Be (a Member). That is the Question… That Estoppel Can Help Answer.
This week’s post considers a recent decision from New York County Commercial Division Justice Borrok, who offers well-reasoned guidance on the separateness between claims to specifically enforce a buy-sell agreement, on the one hand, and damages claims, on the other.
Continue Reading Never the Twain Shall Meet: Damages Claims Do Not Offset the Purchase Price in Buy-Sell Agreements
It’s that time of year again! This 12th annual edition of Summer Shorts presents brief commentary on five recent decisions of interest in business divorce cases in the New York courts.
Continue Reading Summer Shorts: LLC Dissolution and Other Recent Decisions of Interest
Two owner groups. Seven realty-holding joint ventures. Four different versions of disputed capital call provisions. Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Andrea Masley tackles that and much more in her 132-page opinion in Ashkenazy v. Gindi, featured in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading A Lesson In Drafting Capital Call Provisions
Hard to believe in the year 2021 we’re seeing litigation over the validity of capital calls because notice was given by email rather than snail mail, but that’s what happened in a case recently decided by the Appellate Division, Fourth Department and reported in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Court Cancels Capital Call For Want of a Postage Stamp
It’s back! For the third week in a row, New York Business Divorce examines a decision by Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Saliann Scarpulla in a multi-faceted feud among members of the Yu family, this time requiring the court to balance the fiduciary duty owed by LLC managers against the right to amend the operating agreement without the consent of the affected minority member.
Continue Reading Does This Decision Put the Brakes on Non-Unanimous Amendments to Operating Agreements?
This weeks New York Business Divorce examines a recent decision by Justice Saliann Scarpulla, dismissing a complaint seeking judicial dissolution of two family-owned LLCs in which the plaintiff alleged that his siblings’ actions were in furtherance of a “personal vendetta.”
Continue Reading Judicial Dissolution and the Weaponized LLC