In this week’s New York Business Divorce, the sequel to an article about an earlier decision in the same case, read about a trio of decisions issued in rapid succession against a widow who claimed to have become shareholder of a corporation through a testamentary bequest that violated a shareholders’ agreement prohibiting stock transfers except to the shareholders’ “issue” or upon “unanimous consent” of all shareholders.
Continue Reading Three Strikes You’re Out: Sebrow Revisited

This week’s New York Business Divorce offers readers a preview of two thought provoking articles by Professors Donald Weidner and Daniel Kleinberger published as point/counter-point in the current issue of The Business Lawyer on the subject of LLCs, the direct-derivative distinction, and Special Litigation Committees. …
Continue Reading LLCs, Direct vs. Derivative Claims, and Special Litigation Committees: A Lively Debate

LLC members often enter into an operating agreement containing certain formality requirements, then exercise substantially less formality in their dealings. In those cases, the argument that a member waived his or her right to insist upon the formality requirements of the operating agreement is a familiar one. In a recent case, New York County Justice Borrok considers a party’s claim that text messages establish his 9.9% membership interest in an immensely valuable cryptocurrency business, despite admitted non-compliance with the member-admission requirements of the operating agreement. …
Continue Reading Text Messages Trump Formalities in Ownership Dispute Over Cryptocurrency Business

Characterizing funds transfers to and from the company and its owners as either loan or capital transactions, and failing to adequately document such transactions, can have drastic financial, tax, and litigation consequences. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading A Loan Is a Loan Is a Loan, Except When It’s Equity

They say revenge is a dish best served cold. In this week’s New York Business Divorce, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay serves his former business partner a cold dish in the form of a large post-trial judgment in a case seeking dissolution and derivative damages on behalf of two out-of-state entities formed to operate defunct Ramsay restaurant “The Fat Cow.”…
Continue Reading Gordon Ramsay’s The Fat Cow: Dishing Up Damages and Dissolution

In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about the latest chapter in a long-running litigation saga between the son and daughter of artist Peter Max fighting for control of their family-owned corporation.
Continue Reading Principles of Fiduciary Deference: The Business Judgment Rule and Exculpatory Clauses

A plaintiff’s “equitable standing” to bring a shareholder derivative action is hardly a common issue in litigation of the sort, which makes all the more interesting last week’s decision by the Delaware Court of Chancery rejecting a plaintiff’s attempt to bypass the contemporaneous ownership rule. Read more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Equitable Standing in Shareholder Derivative Suit Bows to the Contemporaneous Ownership Rule

In this week’s New York Business Divorce, learn the tough lesson for the dissolution petitioner who states sufficient grounds to dissolve but fails to prove it with evidence accompanying the petition.
Continue Reading The Evidenceless Petition to Dissolve

This week’s post introduces the latest episode of the Business Divorce Roundtable podcast, featuring an interview with Professor Meredith Miller of Touro Law Center discussing her recent law review article entitled Challenging Gender Discrimination in Closely Held Firms: The Hope and Hazard of Corporate Oppression Doctrine. Please give it a listen!
Continue Reading Corporate Oppression Doctrine Meets Sex Discrimination: A Conversation with Professor Meredith Miller