The Appellate Division, Second Department last week decided a trio of appeals in related cases concerning the consequences of an LLC member’s withdrawal, holding that the member was not entitled to a fair-value buyout and that upon withdrawal he lost standing to maintain derivative claims. Read all about it in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Operating Agreement Defeats Statutory Buyout Rights Upon LLC Member’s Withdrawal

Professor Daniel Kleinberger’s article, The Plight of the Bare Naked Assignee, is the springboard for this week’s post about whether assignees of an LLC membership interest should have a right inspect LLC records. It’s in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Can the Bare Naked Assignee Demand Access to LLC Records?

After more than two years in receivership, an appeals court gives a dissolved LLC a new lease on life because the petitioners “offered no competent evidentiary proof” why the entity should have been dissolved. We take a closer look in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading “Where’s the Beef?” Says Appeals Court, Reversing LLC Dissolution

Is a “Management Member” of an LLC, who holds only an economic interest, a “Member” for purposes of demanding access to the LLC’s books and records? Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich, applying Delaware law, closely examined the operating agreement in upholding inspection rights, as explained in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading A Member By Any Other Name . . . May Have Access to LLC Books and Records

A minority member of an LLC that operates a Manhattan restaurant learned how tough it can be to get judicial dissolution of a financially sound LLC that’s achieving its intended purpose, notwithstanding allegations of majority oppression. It’s in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading LLC’s Purpose Being Achieved? Business Doing Fine? Good Luck Getting Judicial Dissolution

Did the parties get it wrong, or the judge, or both in Verkhoglyad v Benimovich, in which the court let proceed a claim to dissolve a foreign business entity and refused to enforce forum selection and pre-suit mediation clauses in the operating agreement of a New Jersey LLC. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Read This Case. Slap Your Head. Not Too Hard.

Business Divorce Stories is the title of the latest episode of the Business Divorce Roundtable podcast highlighted in this week’s post, featuring short interviews with business appraiser Tony Cotrupe and attorney Jeffrey Eilender sharing their first-hand accounts of business divorce cases involving break-ups of two businesses, each co-owned by a pair of brothers.
Continue Reading Business Divorce Stories: Podcast Interviews with Business Appraiser Tony Cotrupe and Attorney Jeffrey Eilender

This 7th annual edition of Summer Shorts presents brief commentary on three must-read decisions in business divorce cases involving the use of special litigation committees in derivative actions by LLC members; dissolution of a family-owned real estate holding corporation and LLC; and a Delaware case in which Chancery Court ordered dissolution of a deadlocked LLC co-owned by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.
Continue Reading Summer Shorts: Three Must-Read Decisions

Did the Appellate Division, Second Department, throw us a curve ball in its decision last week in Mace v. Tunick, reinstating an LLC dissolution complaint based on its finding that the operating agreement’s purpose clause, authorizing the LLC to engage in “any lawful business,” did not set forth “any particular purpose”? Learn more about this important development in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Does Your LLC Agreement Have a Purposeless Purpose Clause?