The Appellate Division, Second Department, last week decided three appeals in the same business divorce case, addressing important issues concerning claims for LLC dissolution, equitable buyout, and use of company monies for legal fees defending dissolution proceedings. This week’s New York Business Divorce has the story.
Continue Reading One Parking Lot, Two Brothers, Three Decisions
The LLC majority members in Bonanni v. Horizons Investors Corp., were ordered to pay the piper in a post-trial decision earlier this month by Justice Elizabeth Emerson in a 10-year old case, finding that they had converted the plaintiff’s minority membership interest. It’s in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading A Decade Later, LLC’s Majority Members Pay The Price For Converting Minority Member’s Interest
The Revised Uniform LLC Act or “RULLCA” has been adopted by a growing number of states. This week’s New York Business Divorce highlights RULLCA’s overlapping dissolution and dissociation provisions as recently construed by one appellate court.
Continue Reading Choose Carefully: Dissolution vs. Dissociation Under RULLCA
New York Business Divorce this week inaugurates Winter Case Notes, offering synopses of three recent decisions by Supreme Court Justices Richard Platkin, Stephen Bucaria, and Cynthia Kern in cases involving the removal of an LLC manager and other issues of interest to business divorce professionals.
Continue Reading Winter Case Notes: LLC Manager Removal and Other Recent Decisions of Interest
This week’s New York Business Divorce highlights a recent decision by Justice Richard Platkin in a case involving a fractured family-owned business where the deaths of two shareholders before and during litigation triggered a consequential change in control.
Continue Reading Death of a Shareholder
Equity jurisprudence cozies up to LLCs in the appellate ruling highlighted in this week’s New York Business Divorce involving the forced sale of a dissociated member’s interest.
Continue Reading Dissociated LLC Member Faces “Equitable” Forced Buy-Out
Pizza’s on the menu in this week’s New York Business Divorce, or at least a dispute between co-members of an LLC that owns a popular Manhattan pizzeria. Just don’t look for any extra cheese on Justice Sherwood’s recent decision in Manzella v. Caporuscio, authorizing the majority member to terminate the minority member’s employment.
Continue Reading Pizza Chef with Bigger Piece of LLC Pie Allowed to Terminate Minority Member’s Employment
In states that have enacted the Revised Uniform LLC Act, courts can expel or “dissociate” a member on specified grounds including the member’s conduct that makes it no longer reasonably practicable to carry on the LLC’s activities with that person as a member. In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about a recent New Jersey appellate decision applying that state’s version of the dissociation statute.
Continue Reading Involuntary Member Dissociation Under RULLCA
Traditions are good. This blog has two annual traditions. First, at the end of each year I write a post listing the year’s top ten business divorce decisions. Second, each August I offer readers who are (or ought to be) on summer vacation some light reading in the form of three, relatively short case summaries.
So here we are in what’s been a particularly felicitous August weather-wise (at least here in the Northeast U.S.), with another edition of Summer Shorts. This edition’s summaries feature two out-of-state cases — one from Florida involving expulsion of an LLC member and one from Delaware involving the valuation upon redemption of an LLC member’s interest — and a New York appellate court decision involving the removal of a limited partnership’s general partner.
Froonjian v Ultimate Combatant, LLC, No. 4D14-662 [Fla. Dist. Ct. App. May 27, 2015]. The Florida intermediate appellate court’s ruling in Froonjian makes for a fascinating contrast with New York case law represented most prominently by the Second Department’s 2010 decision in Chiu v Chiu holding that, absent express authorization in the LLC’s operating agreement, a member’s involuntary expulsion is not permitted. Going 180° in the other direction, the Froonjian court upheld the majority members’ expulsion of a minority member from a Florida LLC that had no operating agreement, reasoning that the Florida default statute vesting all decision-making authority in the members acting by majority vote encompasses the authority to expel a member.
Continue Reading Summer Shorts: Member Expulsion and Other Recent Decisions of Interest
In Goldstein v Pikus, decided last month by Justice Charles Ramos, the court dismissed a dissolution petition alleging deadlock, brought by one of two co-managing members of an LLC that owns a residential apartment building. Find out why in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Deadlock Hits Dead End in LLC Dissolution Case