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With a genuine sense of loss, we bid adieu to Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich, who retired at the end of May after more than three decades of service on the bench, including nearly ten years as a Justice of the Commercial Division. Her accomplishments are many and varied. She is a detailed and scholarly writer. She ran an orderly and efficient part. Invariably well prepared, she asked probing questions at oral argument, arriving quickly at the “nub” of the issue. It was a pleasure and a luxury to be a litigant in her part.

Justice Kornreich also knew and understood as well as any judge the complexities and dynamics of business divorce cases.

As a testament to Justice Kornreich’s quality as a jurist, this blog has written about her opinions on many an occasion, with some of her decisions receiving repeat treatment. Rather than quantify her massive body of work, this week’s post will summarize a half dozen or so of Justice Kornreich’s more memorable decisions in the area of business divorce. You can click on the case name to read the earlier post. Continue Reading A Trip Down Business Divorce Lane with Recently Retired Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich

Mediation, as commonly understood in the context of alternative dispute resolution, employs a neutral third party to facilitate negotiation and voluntary agreement between the parties. Unlike arbitration, the mediator does not conduct an evidentiary hearing, is able to “caucus” separately with each side, and does not impose a solution or issue a legally binding award.

Or so I thought, until I came across last week’s appellate ruling in Korangy v Malone, 2018 NY Slip Op 03767 [1st Dept May 24, 2018], in which the court affirmed an order dismissing claims by one 50% LLC member against the other 50% member based on the outcome of a prior, “binding mediation” conducted pursuant to a provision in the LLC’s operating agreement addressing member deadlock.

When I did a little online research, I found commentary about binding mediation — in which mediators usually impose a legally enforceable resolution only after they fail to produce a voluntary settlement — both negative (“a trap for the unwary”) and positive (“more cost effective than arbitration”). I also got the sense that the inclusion of mandatory, binding mediation clauses in commercial contracts, insofar as it has achieved any significant level of acceptance, mostly is confined to standardized transactions such as construction and reinsurance contracts.

Whatever their utility in those contexts, does it make sense to include an ex ante provision for binding mediation as a deadlock-breaking device in a shareholders or operating agreement, such as the one in Korangy v Malone? I doubt it, but let’s first take a look at the case. Continue Reading Anyone Think Binding Mediation to Break Deadlock Is a Good Idea?

Transactional lawyers who assist clients in the formation and restructuring of business entities, and the litigators who clean up the transactional lawyers’ occasional messes, each have lessons to learn from last week’s appellate ruling in 223 Sam, LLC v 223 15th Street, LLC, 2018 NY Slip Op 03118 [2d Dept May 2, 2018].

The lesson for transactional lawyers is, when you go to the time, trouble and client expense of negotiating and preparing a shareholders or operating agreement, every time you transmit via email or other means a copy of the unsigned agreement, no matter how preliminary or advanced the draft, include a proviso that there is no binding agreement until the parties exchange fully signed copies. Or better yet, put the proviso in the body of the agreement. Or both.

For litigators, the lesson is twofold. First, litigation, like a prize fight, usually goes a number of rounds before there’s a victor (or, more likely, a settlement). An early round win, such as defeating the adverse party’s bid for a preliminary injunction, is no guaranty the other side won’t prevail, with or without an assist from a panel of appellate judges. Second, if you’re litigating a governance or ownership dispute between putative co-owners of a realty holding entity, it’s usually not a good idea to file a lis pendens against the real property unless you (or your client) are prepared to pay the other side’s legal fees to secure its cancellation. Continue Reading If LLC Agreement Must Be in Writing, Must it Be Signed?

You know there’s something unusual going on in a case involving a dispute between co-members of an LLC — a form of business entity that didn’t exist in New York until 1994 — when the key legal precedents cited in the parties’ briefs date from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

By any measure, Horowitz v Montauk U.S.A., LLC, No. 16-3912 [2d Cir. Apr. 20, 2018], is an unusual case, stemming from a fiercely contentious battle between 50/50 co-owners for control of a highly successful restaurant and night spot called The Sloppy Tuna located on the beach in Montauk, New York, a popular summer resort on the eastern tip of Long Island. The dispute, which is still going strong after four years, has spawned at least a half dozen lawsuits in state and federal courts in New York and Georgia, and landed operational control of The Sloppy Tuna in the hands of a court-appointed receiver.

Horowitz is a lawsuit brought in federal court by one of The Sloppy Tuna’s 50% members (Member #1) seeking injunctive relief and damages against the restaurant entity, a New York LLC (Restaurant), for trademark infringement based on the alleged unauthorized use of various trademarks and domain names related to The Sloppy Tuna that Member #1 registered in the name of his solely-owned company (Montauk).

The threshold issue teed up for the court in Horowitz — this post won’t address the several other issues addressed in the court’s opinion — and the reason I call the case unusual, is whether the Restaurant’s other 50% member (Member #2), who was not named as a party to the trademark action and who did not move to intervene in the action personally, under governing New York law has the right to defend the suit derivatively on behalf of the Restaurant. Continue Reading Court Grants 50% LLC Member Derivative Right to Defend Action Brought by Other 50% Member’s Solely Owned Company

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 business divorce litigation, petitioners / plaintiffs often want to start the case with a bang. A common tactic is to file a petition / complaint simultaneously with an injunction motion. Often there is a real need for an injunction – the respondent / defendant may be engaging in activities that could cause real, irreparable harm.

But often another objective is that if the injunction motion succeeds, it will be an early win in the case, set the stage favorably for the litigation to come, put significant leverage on the respondent / defendant by restricting its freedom to operate the business, and possibly result in a speedier resolution of the case. If the injunction motion or complaint itself has vulnerabilities, however, a case meant to start with a bang may end with an unceremonious whimper. That is just one lesson from a recent decision by Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Saliann Scarpulla in Pappas v 38-40 LLC, 2018 NY Slip Op 30329(U) [Sup Ct NY County Feb. 22, 2018]). Continue Reading Operating Agreement Dooms Derivative Claims by Deceased LLC Member’s Estate

Unlike the LLC statutes in many other states, New York’s LLC Law does not authorize the LLC or any of its members to seek judicial expulsion of another member, no matter how egregious the member’s behavior. As the Appellate Division ruled in Chiu v Chiu, the only way to expel (a/k/a dissociate) a member of a New York LLC is if the operating agreement so provides.

A carefully tailored expulsion provision in an operating agreement, paired with a reasonably fair buyout, can provide a salutary mechanism for protecting the LLC against a member who engages in wrongful or illegal conduct, jeopardizes the LLC’s licensing or legal status, or consistently fails to perform his or her delegated responsibilities. On the other hand, an expulsion provision that uses subjective or overly broad criteria to define expulsion trigger events can encourage opportunistic behavior by the control faction against the minority, especially if expulsion is accompanied by a forced buyout of the expelled member on unfair financial terms. LLC guru Tom Rutledge wrote a very informative article on the topic, about which I interviewed him for my podcast, in which he gives a roadmap of the various considerations involved in designing and implementing an effective expulsion provision in an LLC agreement.

It’s one thing when all of the LLC’s members consent to an operating agreement authorizing member expulsion. However well or poorly drawn, however fair or unfair its terms, that’s called freedom of contract. You made your bed, now lie in it. But what about an operating agreement adopted by a control faction, without the consent of the minority, authorizing member expulsion at the control faction’s behest? Or how about an operating agreement with expulsion and lopsided buyout provisions adopted without minority consent, after the breakout of hostilities with the minority?

Which points back to Shapiro v Ettenson, a case I’ve written about several times before (here, here, and here). For those unfamiliar with the case, in Shapiro the lower and appellate courts construed LLC Law § 402 (c) (3) (“Voting Rights of Members”) as permitting holders of a majority interest in the LLC to adopt an initial, binding operating agreement long after the LLC was formed and commenced business, without the consent of the minority member. The operating agreement adopted in that case, among other things, converted the LLC from member-managed to manager-managed, authorized additional capital calls, the dilution of the membership interest of a non-contributing member, and member expulsion for cause. Continue Reading LLC Member Expulsion: What Hath Shapiro Wrought?

Under the right set of facts, New York courts occasionally find remedies for LLC owners not explicitly authorized in the Limited Liability Company Law (“LLC Law”). Judges have a natural inclination to try to find solutions for legal problems where existing law falls short, which is part of how the common law came to be.

One striking example is the LLC derivative cause of action. In Tzolis v Wolff, 10 NY3d 100 [2008], the Court of Appeals ruled that members of an LLC “may bring derivative suits on the LLC’s behalf, even though there are no provisions governing such suits in the Limited Liability Company Law,” and even though the Legislature considered, but rejected, including a derivative right of action in the LLC Law.

Another remedy not found in the LLC statutes is the so-called “equitable buyout” in LLC dissolution proceedings.

In a nutshell, an equitable buyout grants an LLC member the possibility upon dissolution of the company (under circumstances yet to be well defined by the courts) of the ability to purchase the other member’s interest as an alternative to liquidation and sale of the company’s assets at auction. An equitable buyout results in one member involuntarily selling his or her equity to the other, and the other member becoming the business’s sole owner. The entity’s existence continues post-buyout – despite ostensibly being “dissolved.” Continue Reading The LLC Equitable Buyout: Past, Present, Future

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 test for judicial dissolution of LLCs under LLC Law § 702, as laid down in 1545 Ocean Avenue, initially asks whether the managers are unable or unwilling to reasonably permit or promote realization of the LLC’s “stated purpose” as found in its operating agreement.

I would venture to say that the overwhelming majority of operating agreements, in their purpose clauses, use the phrase “any lawful business” which, not coincidentally, mirrors the enabling language found in LLC Law § 201, authorizing LLCs to be formed for “any lawful business purpose.” Boiler-plate or not, using “any lawful business” in the purpose clause can be a prudent drafting technique to avoid future conflict or need to amend the operating agreement should the LLC’s business model change in response to future events. Of course, there are some circumstances, often involving single asset real estate holding companies, when stating a specific purpose is the more prudent technique.

Which is why last summer’s decision by the Appellate Division, Second Department in Mace v Tunick was such an eye opener. In Mace, the court held that the “any lawful business” purpose clause in the operating agreement at issue did not state any purpose, and on the basis that the lower court had engaged in impermissible fact-finding on a pre-answer dismissal motion, reversed the lower court’s summary dismissal of the minority member’s dissolution suit and remanded the case for further proceedings.

If “any lawful business” states no purpose, I queried in my prior post on the case, does “the primary focus of the judicial dissolution standard under 1545 Ocean Avenue — whether the LLC’s managers are willing or able to achieve its stated purpose under the operating agreement — merely becomes a waystation on the road to more protracted litigation proceedings requiring discovery and evidentiary hearings”?

I still don’t have the definitive answer to that question, but I can tell you what happened in Mace on remand to the lower court, and after the lower court conducted a trial. Continue Reading The Purposeless Purpose Clause Makes a Comeback — Or Does It?