Welcome to this year’s Winter Case Notes where, amidst the arctic blast currently sweeping most of the nation, I offer shortish takes on several court decisions in recent business divorce cases.

This year’s edition features notable decisions by New York courts stemming from cases with, shall we say, not your typical fact patterns:

  • Affirming the lower court’s post-trial verdict rejecting a shareholder’s claim to enforce an alleged agreement requiring the defendant shareholder, following the plaintiff’s acquittal on murder charges, to transfer back to the plaintiff shares he sold to the plaintiff in the course of the plaintiff’s lengthy criminal proceedings;
  • Without deciding whether the death — accidental in this case — of an LLC member qualifies as a withdrawal for purposes of LLC Law § 509’s buyout provision, ordering the surviving member to turn over books and records to the estate representative but only through the date of death; and
  • Denying interim injunctive relief restoring a minority shareholder to his former management position in a group of auto dealerships upon the court’s finding that the plaintiff failed to establish a likelihood of success on his claims of minority shareholder oppression and that the governing agreements were never effective.

Continue Reading Winter Case Notes: Murder, Forgery, Accidental Death, Oppression, Oh My!

In this week’s New York Business Divorce, we consider the problem of concurrent, overlapping business and marital dissolution proceedings, including a small but growing body of case law addressing how to prioritize one over the other. For judges and lawyers accustomed to commercial courts exercising their jurisdictional powers broadly, the result may be surprising.
Continue Reading Parallel Business and Matrimonial Divorce Proceedings

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.
Continue Reading Ambiguous Agreement, Clear Consequences

This week’s New York Business Divorce highlights a fascinating New Jersey case in which the court expelled the minority member of an LLC after it abandoned the venture and withdrew its financial support.
Continue Reading Judicially Expelled Member Pays Heavy Price For Abandoning LLC

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.

Continue Reading A Potent Combo: Misappropriation of Corporate Opportunity Meets Faithless Servant

The relative simplicity of a books and records demand can be disarming. But books and records demands sometimes raise critical issues that can dramatically alter the case going forward.
Continue Reading Proceed with Caution: Strategy Considerations Before Making a Books and Records Demand

This week’s New York Business Divorce presents a retrospective assessment of the state of New York law concerning LLC business divorce, including summaries of the most significant court decisions, adapted from a recent presentation at the Eileen Bransten Institute on Complex Commercial Litigation.
Continue Reading New York LLC Caselaw’s Greatest Hits