Imagine this: Your husband dies in 2016. He leaves behind an unpaid judgment owed to a Florida creditor, one that will balloon past $1 million with interest, that the estate cannot afford to pay. He also leaves a 50% stake in the family’s Brooklyn real estate company, which by all indications is thriving, but which
Can an operating agreement require majority approval before a minority member may sue derivatively? A recent Delaware decision warns against letting authority provisions swallow the derivative claim whole.
Continue Reading The Derivative Claim and the Majority Approval Trap
The Appellate Division, Second Department delivered last week a fascinating case pitting a deadlock-based LLC dissolution petition against an equity forfeiture provision in the parties’ operating agreement. Add to that a bracing reminder that lazy pleadings and procedural missteps in special proceedings can be outcome-determinative, and Ribeiro v Libutti, 2025 NY Slip Op 06865 (2d Dept Dec. 10, 2025), becomes a cautionary tale for business owners and litigators alike.
When an aggrieved party feels his or her back against the wall, there is a strong temptation to assert every claim under the sun against the adversary. Offense is the best defense, so they say. But when the claims don’t stick, litigants may find that more isn’t necessarily more… but it sure can tie up a case for years, particularly in the backlogged Second Department.
Today’s case—Waldorf Invs. L.P. v Waldorf—offers a solid back-to-basics review of the issues that can be litigated when a limited partnership goes south (and the viability of those claims), but at the cost, figuratively and literally, of 8 years of litigation.
Continue Reading Second Department Denies Judicial Dissolution of Realty Holding Limited Partnership (and Related Claims), Ending 22-Count Dispute
This week’s New York Business Divorce post examines a recent appellate court decision in which the Third Department searches the record to find deadlocked 50/50 members unable to carry on a realty LLC’s business, warranting dissolution.
Continue Reading Help Comes From an Unexpected Place in LLC Deadlock Dissolution: The Third Department
A recent Commercial Division decision illustrates anew the elevated challenge of suing for judicial dissolution of a viable realty-holding company — even when the estranged co-members are already immersed in multiple litigations. Read about it in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading It Takes More Than a Litigation Tsunami Between Hostile Members to Obtain Judicial Dissolution of a Realty-Holding LLC
This week’s New York Business Divorce undertakes a post-mortem of sorts on a case involving the judicial dissolution of a pathology medical practice with 50/50 shareholders.
Continue Reading The Pathology of Deadlock Dissolution
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about a multi-year litigation odyssey culminating in the statute-of-limitations dismissal of a claim for misappropriation of an alleged corporate opportunity to own land based upon the date of execution of the contract of sale rather than the closing of the real estate purchase.
Continue Reading A Litigation Odyssey
Two-member, 50/50 LLCs are natural fodder for deadlock. This week’s New York Business Divorce questions whether New York’s standard for LLC dissolution takes too narrow an approach to deadlock.
Continue Reading Has the Time Come for New York to Follow Delaware and Officially Pronounce Deadlock as Ground for LLC Dissolution?
One of the more interesting defenses in judicial dissolution cases alleging deadlock is that the petitioner itself contrived or manufactured the deadlock for the purpose of achieving dissolution. It’s a defense long ago recognized in cases involving close corporations, and only more recently in cases involving LLCs, including a decision this month by the Delaware Chancery Court. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Contrived LLC Deadlock Doesn’t Cut the Delaware Dissolution Mustard