In a case featuring your authors as counsel for the prevailing parties, NY County Commercial Division Justice Robert Reed enforces the buy-sell provision of a corporation’s shareholders agreement triggered by the shareholders’ petition for dissolution.
Continue Reading Look Before You Leap: Buy-Sell Agreements Triggered by a Petition for Dissolution
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about a recent appeals court decision in which an elderly male business founder alleged he was ousted from the company and his reputation smeared based upon false allegations of sexual harassment allegedly solicited by a hostile male CEO. Do these allegations equate to a viable claim for breach of fiduciary duty against the CEO? Find out in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading #MeToo and Business Divorce: The Flip Side
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
In a decision of apparent first impression last month, Justice Nancy Bannon of the Manhattan Supreme Court issued an injunction against the holding of a corporate election under BCL § 619. Minority shareholders facing an anticipated election called by a rival majority would be wise to consider the roadmap to injunctive relief charted by the plaintiffs here.
Continue Reading Stop the Vote: Injunction Halts Shareholders Meeting Pursuant to Courts’ Broad Power to Review Corporate Elections
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about the unhappy consequences under the “informal dissolution” doctrine to befall a corporate director who effectuated the liquidation of a defunct corporation’s assets without providing statutory notice of dissolution to the entity’s creditors.
Continue Reading “Informal Dissolution” and Individual Liability
The New York Business Divorce blog has covered hundreds of cases over the past 11 years. This week’s post revisits three of them, two of which were recently resolved, one of which is still going strong, and all of which made the list of Top Ten business divorce cases in years past.
Continue Reading Business Divorce Epilogues
This week’s New York Business Divorce examines an unusual case centering on an atypical quorum provision in an operating agreement requiring the presence of all managers in order to conduct any business.
Continue Reading Think Twice Before Putting 100% Quorum Requirement in By-Laws or LLC Agreement
The mix of romance and business partnership can prove toxic when one or the other fails, as illustrated in a case recently decided by Queens County Justice Dufficy in Shih v. Kim, highlighted in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading When Love and Business Fails
This week’s New York Business Divorce offers its annual Winter Case Notes with synopses of four recent decisions by Supreme Court Justices Elizabeth Emerson, Stephen Bucaria, and Charles Ramos in cases involving partnership, close corporation, and LLC disputes.
Continue Reading Winter Case Notes: De Facto Partnership and Other Recent Decisions of Interest
Stock transfer restrictions in closely held corporations are routinely upheld by courts. So are increases in authorized shares that treat existing shareholders uniformly. But sometimes, as in the case highlighted in this week’s New York Business Divorce, the combined effect of the two may breach duties owed by controllers to the minority.
Continue Reading Too Clever By Half? Court Permits Suit Challenging Share Increase Tied to Transfer Restrictions