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Recently, in two separate cases, two New York judges construing two LLC agreements of two LLCs formed under the laws of two different states — Delaware and Nevada — came to the same conclusion when faced with the same argument by the LLCs’ controllers who contended that minority members waived the right to institute litigation asserting derivative claims based on provisions in the agreements requiring managerial or member consent to bring an action on behalf of the company.

In both cases, the judges rejected the waiver argument after finding that the language of the provisions upon which the controllers relied did not expressly prohibit derivative claims. The more interesting question not reached, at least in the case of the Delaware LLC for reasons I’ll explain below, is whether the statute authorizing derivative claims is mandatory or permissive.

Talking Capital

The first case, Talking Capital LLC v Omanoff, 2018 NY Slip Op 30332(U) [Sup Ct NY County Feb. 23, 2018], involves a New York-based, three-member Delaware LLC in the factoring business, providing financing to telecommunications firms that route international calls. The suit was filed by one of the members against the other two and their principals, at heart alleging derivative claims for usurpation of business opportunity, breach of the LLC agreement, and breach of fiduciary duty by forming a competing entity in league with the LLC’s third-party lender. Continue Reading Can LLC Agreement Waive Right to Sue Derivatively? Not in These Two Cases

In the annals of business divorce litigation and assorted other disputes between co-owners of closely held business entities, the cause of action for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing likely wins the prize for the claim least understood by practitioners and most frequently dismissed by judges.

As I’ve written before, and as Professor Dan Kleinberger noted in his guest post on this blog, at least part of the confusion comes from its name. Start with the term “implied covenant.” To the average reader, it connotes a duty imposed by law without regard to the parties’ intentions and without mutual consent, like a fiduciary duty (the implied covenant often is referred to as the “implied duty”). Next comes “good faith,” connoting something done sincerely and honestly, without malice, disloyalty, or a desire to deceive or defraud. Finally comes “fair dealing.” Fair is fair is the opposite of unfair, right? Put them all together, and you’ve got what sounds like an all-purpose “lite” version of some quasi-fiduciary duty, enabling a court of equity to apply free-floating standards of honesty and fairness to adjust relations between business partners.

By and large, court decisions out of the Delaware Chancery Court have done a far better job than their New York counterparts in explaining the implied covenant’s strictly contractual roots and its parsimonious reach. A particularly good example is Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III’s recent Memorandum Opinion in Miller v HCP & Co., C.A. No. 2017-0291-SG [Del Ch Feb. 1, 2018], in which he dismissed a suit brought by a minority member of an LLC alleging that the controller breached the implied covenant by selling the company for $43 million to a third party via private sale rather than conducting an open-market sale or auction to ensure maximum value for all members under the operating agreement’s waterfall. Continue Reading Will Someone Please Re-Name the Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing?

The steady flow and scholarly character of Delaware Chancery Court opinions in company valuation contests provide an important resource and learning tool for business divorce practitioners, appraisers, and judges in New York and elsewhere.

Over the years, I’ve reported on a number of Chancery Court decisions in statutory fair value cases arising from dissenting shareholder proceedings. In this post, I highlight two recent post-trial opinions by Vice Chancellors Sam Glasscock (photo left) and Tamika Montgomery-Reeves (photo right) addressing valuation and what I’ll call quasi-valuation in more atypical settings.

In the first case, Vice Chancellor Glasscock applied a fair value standard to resolve a buy-out settlement agreement between ex-spouses who co-owned two operating companies and a real estate holding company. In the second case, Vice Chancellor Montgomery-Reeves determined whether a biotechnology start-up company was insolvent for purposes of appointing a receiver under Section 291 of the Delaware General Corporation Law. Continue Reading Delaware Chancery Court Rulings Address Valuation and Insolvency Disputes

This winter forever will be remembered in the Northeast as the winter of the “bomb cyclone,” which gets credit for the 6º temperature and bone-chilling winds howling outside as I write this. So in its honor, I’m accelerating my annual Winter Case Notes synopses of recent business divorce cases, which normally don’t appear until later in the season.

This year’s selections include a variety of interesting issues, including LLC dissolution based on deadlock; the survival of an LLC membership interest after bankruptcy; application of the entire-fairness test in a challenge to a cash-out merger; an interim request for reinstatement by an expelled LLC member; and a successful appeal from a fee award in a shareholder derivative action.

Deadlock Between LLC’s Co-Managers Requires Hearing in Dissolution Proceeding

Advanced 23, LLC v Chamber House Partners, LLC, 2017 NY Slip Op 32662(U) [Sup Ct NY County Dec. 15, 2017].  Deadlock is not an independent basis for judicial dissolution of New York LLC’s under the governing standard adopted in the 1545 Ocean Avenue case but, as Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Saliann Scarpulla explains in her decision, when two co-equal managers are unable to cooperate, the court “must consider the managers’ disagreement in light of the operating agreement and the continued ability of [the LLC] to function in that context.” In Advanced 23, the co-managers exchanged accusations of bad acts and omissions, e.g., one of them transferring LLC funds to an unauthorized bank account, raising material issues of fact as to the effectiveness of the LLC’s management and therefore requiring an evidentiary hearing, which is just what Justice Scarpulla ordered. Of further note, in a companion decision denying the respondent’s motion to dismiss the petition (read here), Justice Scarpulla rejected without discussion the respondent’s argument that judicial dissolution under LLC Law § 702 was unavailable based on a provision in the operating agreement stating that the LLC “will be dissolved only upon the unanimous determination of the Members to dissolve.” In that regard, the decision aligns with Justice Stephen Bucaria’s holding in Matter of Youngwall, that even an express waiver of the right to seek judicial dissolution of an LLC is void as against public policy. Continue Reading Winter Case Notes: LLC Deadlock and Other Recent Decisions of Interest

The sudden death of Alexander Calderwood, the brilliant but troubled co-founder of the Ace brand of hotels, resulted in some fierce litigation between Calderwood’s estate and Calderwood’s LLC co-member over the nature of his estate’s membership interest in the company after his death. The litigation came to a head earlier this month, when Justice Barbara R. Kapnick issued a scholarly decision for a unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, First Department in Estate of Calderwood v ACE Group Int’l, LLC, 2017 NY Slip Op 08750 [1st Dept Dec. 14, 2017].

Boiled down, the question on appeal was whether, under Delaware law, Calderwood’s estate was a bona fide member of the LLC with all of a member’s associated rights and privileges, or instead, a mere assignee of Calderwood’s membership interest. As written about in a post last Spring (read here), New York County Commercial Division Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich issued a decision dismissing most of the Estate’s amended complaint, holding that the Estate lacked membership status in the LLC upon Calderwood’s death. Let’s see how the appeals court considered the issue. Continue Reading Delaware Contractarian Principles Prevail in Appeal Over Deceased Ace Hotel Founder’s LLC Interest

I’ve seen LLC operating agreements ranging from one page to over 100. Usually there’s a direct relationship between the length of the agreement and the complexity of the LLC’s capital and management structure.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about LLC agreements, it’s that no matter how comprehensive and tome-like their design, there’s no guarantee that a future, unanticipated dispute won’t expose the inevitable cracks in the design prompting the need for court intervention. Indeed, depending on the drafter’s skill, one can argue the more complex the LLC agreement, the greater the risk of a court contest over its interpretation.

Take the recent case of Tungsten Partners LLC v Ace Group International LLC, 2017 NY Slip Op 32025(U) [Sup Ct NY County Sept. 20, 2017], in which Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich was called upon to decide whether the plaintiff holder of a 4% non-voting profits interest, identified as a “Management Member” in a 65-page operating agreement (plus another 170 pages of schedules and exhibits), was a member of the subject Delaware LLC for purposes of demanding access to books and records under § 18-305 of the Delaware LLC Act. Continue Reading A Member By Any Other Name . . . May Have Access to LLC Books and Records

The practical lesson for entrepreneurs of the case I’m about to describe is, never sign complex business agreements without your lawyer, and never ever sign such agreements in the last week of August when your vacationing lawyer is unreachable.

Deals to forge new business enterprises have a pace and momentum all their own. Business considerations, financial considerations, ownership considerations, legal considerations, tax considerations, personality considerations, and more — all have to coalesce and achieve critical mass in support of a meeting of the minds on the deal’s material terms to be memorialized in a binding, enforceable, written agreement.

The dynamics of the negotiations and externalities sometimes create a seize-the-moment mentality that induces one or both sides to push to sign an agreement that’s not fully baked, either to prevent a change of mind or with the expectation that remaining open issues can be cleaned up later. In even more extreme situations, the parties commit time and capital to the new venture while the negotiations are ongoing, that is, acting and treating each other as business partners before the deal is consummated.

Eagle Force Holdings, LLC v Campbell, Mem. Opinion, C.A. No. 10803-VCMR [Del Ch Sept. 1, 2017], decided earlier this month by Vice Chancellor Tamika Montgomery-Reeves of the Delaware Court of Chancery, is one of those extreme cases. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the case, in which the court found unenforceable the transaction documents for a new venture, including signed operating and contribution agreements, is the heavy involvement of sophisticated legal counsel on both sides throughout the process — except for the critical moment when the two principals met alone and signed what was labeled a “draft” agreement just before the start of the Labor Day holiday weekend when their respective lawyers were unreachable. Continue Reading Don’t Let the Deal Get Ahead of the Documents

Regular readers of this blog know it’s been anything but summer doldrums in the world of business divorce, what with case law developments such as the Appellate Division’s potentially far-reaching ruling on the purposeless purpose clause and LLC dissolution in Mace v Tunick reported in last week’s post, and the astonishing story of minority shareholder oppression in the Twin Bay Village case also reported earlier this month.

This year’s edition of Summer Shorts picks up the summer pace with short summaries of three must-read decisions by New York and Delaware courts on three very different business divorce topics: use of a Special Litigation Committee to evaluate derivative claims brought by LLC members (New York); grounds for dissolution and the court’s remedial powers in shareholder oppression cases (New York); and LLC deadlock dissolution (Delaware).

Appellate Ruling Rejects Appointment of Special Litigation Committee in LLC Derivative Suit Where Not Authorized By Operating Agreement

LNYC Loft, LLC v Hudson Opportunity Fund I, LLC, 2017 NY Slip Op 06147 [1st Dept Aug. 15, 2017].  In Tzolis v Wolff, New York’s highest court recognized a common-law right of LLC members to sue derivatively on behalf of the LLC. Subsequent lower court decisions have clarified other aspects of the right by analogy to corporation law, such as requiring the plaintiff LLC member to allege pre-suit demand or demand futility. In shareholder derivative suits involving corporations, the board’s inherent authority to appoint a Special Litigation Committee composed of independent and disinterested directors to assess derivative claims is well established and, when properly implemented, can result in the court’s dismissal of derivative claims based on the SLC’s conclusion that the claims do not merit prosecution by the corporation. Continue Reading Summer Shorts: Three Must-Read Decisions

Board members’ decisions to award compensation packages for themselves can present some thorny issues. In a close corporation, shareholders typically serve as officers and directors, and have a reasonable expectation of compensation in lieu of dividends or distributions. But dissenting shareholders or directors, armed with the benefit of hindsight, can, and often do, criticize a board’s compensation decisions as excessive, claiming self-dealing, looting, and waste. What statutory protections do board members have when making compensation decisions? To what extent can board members truly rely on those protections?

In Cement Masons Local 780 Pension Fund v Schleifer, 56 Misc 3d 1204 [A], 2017 NY Slip Op 50875 [U] [Sup Ct NY County June 29, 2017], Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Saliann Scarpulla considered these issues in a thoughtful opinion, in which she relied on some relatively infrequently litigated provisions of the Business Corporation Law (“BCL”). The decision is also noteworthy for its reliance on decisional law from Delaware on not one, but two important issues of law, one of which was an apparent question of first impression in New York. Although Cement Masons Local involved a public company, it addressed the same statutes that govern close corporations, and provides helpful guidance to board members, and counsel, when weighing compensation decisions. Continue Reading Navigating Rocky Shoals and Safe Harbors When Board Members Fix Their Own Compensation

The third time definitely wasn’t a charm for the plaintiff in Austin v Gould, 2017 NY Slip Op 31494(U) [Sup Ct NY County July 13, 2017], in which the court dismissed ill-pleaded claims for “unfettered and unlimited access to all books and records” of a series of Delaware limited liability companies and their wholly-owned real estate subsidiaries.

The decision by Manhattan Commercial Division Justice O. Peter Sherwood is the latest in a series of trial and appellate court rulings, spread over seven years and three separate lawsuits, rejecting claims by the LLCs’ non-managing one-third owner against the managing two-thirds owner allegedly for failing to distribute millions in management and acquisition fees.

The plaintiff’s two prior lawsuits — the first filed in 2010 and, after its dismissal, the second filed in 2013 — hit dead ends for various reasons including untimeliness and pleading deficiencies. The third lawsuit, filed in 2016, asserted claims for access to the LLCs’ books and records along with damages claims for breach of fiduciary duty and conversion. Continue Reading Books and Records Case Illustrates Crucial Importance of Pre-Suit Demand