In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about an exceptionally rare find: a bifurcated jury trial in a business divorce dispute.
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Derivative Actions
The Flexible “For Cause” Standard for Director and Officer Removal
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, we consider a first-in-a-generation appeals court decision affirming a lower court’s removal of a corporate officer “for cause.”…
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Ambiguous Agreement, Clear Consequences
More than any other entity, Limited Liability Companies are most prone to informal, ambiguous deals among their owners, which become a font for litigation down the road. 2024 begins with a federal trial over an ambiguous, oral agreement. …
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A Potent Combo: Misappropriation of Corporate Opportunity Meets Faithless Servant
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about the potent convergence in a recent decision of two common-law fiduciary duty principles: the corporate opportunity and faithless servant doctrines.
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Damages or Rescission? When Electing Fraud Remedies Choose Wisely
In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about the principle of election of remedies for claims of fraud and the painful lesson a defrauded LLC investor learned when she elected to proceed to trial on the remedy of equitable rescission, only to learn that money damages might have available against the defendant she sued, but rescission was not.
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Derivative into Direct and Waived into Preserved: The Transformative Power of the Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing
Can a shareholder use the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing inherent in the corporation’s shareholders agreement to plead what otherwise would be derivative claims as direct ones? Find out in this week’s post.
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Eastland Redux: Do Close Corporation Shareholders Have a Direct Claim Against Directors For Taking Disguised Distributions?
This week’s New York Business Divorce revisits the Eastland Food v Mekhaya case, focusing on last month’s Maryland Supreme Court’s split decision on whether the minority shareholder has a direct claim for breach of fiduciary duty based on alleged disguised distributions taken by the controlling shareholders.
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Surrogate’s Court Jurisdiction to Resolve Close Business Owner Disputes
In this week’s New York Business Divorce learn whether, and if so, under what circumstances, the New York Surrogate’s Court can compel an accounting of a non-party business entity in which a decedent’s estate holds a minority stake.
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Can a Shareholder Suing Derivatively Face Countersuit Individually?
New York law regards a shareholder derivative plaintiff’s standing as fundamentally distinct from the plaintiff’s individual capacity. That leads to problems where a shareholder derivative defendant hopes to counterclaim against the plaintiff for personal liabilities. Read about this problem, and whether it forecloses direct counterclaims against shareholder derivative plaintiffs, in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Legal Déjà Vu: The Law of Preclusion and Re-Litigation of Standing-Based Dismissals
In this week’s New York Business Divorce we take a deep dive into the law of res judicata and collateral estoppel, tackling a recurring issue in business divorce litigation: re-litigation following standing-based dismissals. …
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