Last month, seasoned business appraiser Andy Ross of Getty Marcus CPA, P.C., and I made a presentation at the Nassau County Bar Association about appraisal proceedings in business divorce cases. With the subject of business valuations front of mind, this article – the first in a three-part series – is a treetops summary of the rules governing how business owners may wind up in an appraisal proceeding. Later articles will address the legal and accounting principles that apply in the valuation proceedings.

But before we get started, some context. What exactly is a valuation proceeding? A valuation proceeding is a special kind of lawsuit in which the owners of a business litigate the “value” (the relevant standard under New York’s Partnership Law) or “fair value” (the standard under the New York Business Corporation Law and Limited Liability Company Law) of a partnership, stock, or membership interest in a business for the purpose of a potential buyout or liquidation of that owner’s interest. Appraisal proceedings may be forced, or they may be voluntary. They may involve a variety of different accounting approaches or methodologies to value an ownership interest. They are always heavily dependent upon expert testimony of accountants. For that reason, the “determination of a fact-finder as to the value of a business, if it is within the range of testimony presented, will not be disturbed on appeal where the valuation rests primarily on the credibility of the expert witnesses and their valuation techniques” (Matter of Wright v Irish, 156 AD3d 803 [2d Dept 2017]).

What are the ways in which a business owner can wind up in a valuation proceeding? The statutory paths, or routes, to a litigated appraisal depend on the kind of entity involved. This article discusses three basic entity forms: partnerships, corporations, and LLCs, and provides a non-exhaustive list of the most common ways to get to a valuation proceeding. Continue Reading Basics of Valuation Proceedings – Litigating an Appraisal from Start to Finish – Part 1

Three recent court decisions from three different states — New York, Pennsylvania, and Alabama — add to the rogue’s gallery of valuation cases stemming from poorly conceived and/or poorly implemented buy-sell agreements among shareholders or LLC members.

Each one, in its own way, teaches a valuable lesson for lawyers charged with drafting such agreements, and also highlights the wisdom of consulting with appraisal experts at the time of drafting.

New York: The Nimkoff Case

The Nimkoff case is an old friend of this blog, and I do mean old. I first wrote about the case in its infancy, in 2010 (read here). Eight years later, following discovery and a dozen or so motions, the case has yet to be tried.

Nimkoff is a fight over the value of a 3.6% membership interest in a single-asset realty holding LLC owned by a group of medical doctors. The plaintiff is the wife-executrix of one of the doctors, whose death in 2004 triggered the LLC’s obligation to purchase the deceased member’s interest for a “Stated Value” in accordance with the operating agreement which also required that the Stated Value be updated annually. Continue Reading Lessons From a Trio of Dysfunctional Buy-Sell Agreements

The hard-fought business divorce litigation between Nissim Kassab and his brother Avraham has provided plenty of fodder for this blog over the last several years (here, here, here, and here) with more to come, as evidenced by Queens County Supreme Court Justice Timothy J. Dufficy’s decision earlier this month dismissing Nissim’s second attempt to plead a claim for judicial dissolution of the brothers’ realty-holding company known as Mall 92-30 Associates LLC (“Mall”), which owns an unimproved lot in a prime development location in downtown Jamaica, Queens, valued around $10 million.

Justice Dufficy’s ruling in Matter of Kassab v Kasab, 2018 NY Slip Op 50934(U) [Sup Ct Queens County June 11, 2018], comes on the heels of a post-trial decision last year in a related case brought by Nissim in which Justice Dufficy conditionally ordered dissolution of their corporation known as Corner 160 Associates, Inc. (“Corner”) which owned two unimproved lots adjoining Mall’s lot. Justice Dufficy’s order gave Avraham the option to buy out Nissim’s 25% interests in both Corner and Mall at fair values determined by the court, but Avraham took a pass and subsequently failed to obtain an appellate stay of the dissolution order, leading to a public auction sale of Corner’s realty two weeks ago by the court-appointed receiver for $18 million.

Nissim’s second shot at dissolving Mall, like the first unsuccessful one, illustrates anew the hurdles faced by a minority member of a solvent, realty-holding LLC, particularly when there’s no operating agreement giving the minority member additional management rights, in satisfying the prevailing standard for judicial dissolution of LLCs as articulated in the 1545 Ocean Avenue case, namely, the LLC’s management “is unable or unwilling to reasonably permit or promote the stated purpose of the entity to be realized or achieved” or that “continuing the entity is financially unfeasible.” Continue Reading Court Denies Second Bite at Dissolution Cherry in Kassab Brothers Business Divorce

Article 11 of the Business Corporation Law features multiple provisions giving judges broad authority and discretion to impose interim remedies designed to preserve corporate assets and otherwise to protect the petitioning minority shareholder’s interests pending judicial dissolution and buy-out proceedings involving closely held New York corporations. They include appointment of a temporary receiver, injunction, setting aside certain conveyances, and bonding the eventual buy-out award.

As in any type of civil litigation, an application for one or more of Article 11’s interim remedies can be motivated by tactical as well as strategic goals, namely, to paint the adverse party as the “bad guy” and to gain leverage for settlement purposes.

Matter of Hammad v Al-Lid Food Corp., Decision and Order, Index No. 518406/17 [Sup Ct Kings County May 29, 2018], decided last month by Brooklyn Commercial Division Justice Sylvia G. Ash, looks like one of those cases in which tactical ambitions overshadowed strategic merit, resulting in the court’s denial of the minority shareholder-petitioner’s motion to impose multi-faceted interim, coercive remedies against the controlling shareholders, well after the corporation elected to purchase the petitioner’s shares for fair value. Continue Reading You Sued for Dissolution, They Elected to Buy You Out, What Else Do You Want?

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

The Lowbet Realty saga, featuring the dissolution court’s rarely used authority to rescind an unauthorized sale of the corporation’s realty under Business Corporation Law § 1114, has finally ended after six years with a decision by the Appellate Division, Second Department, affirming the lower court’s order letting stand the realty’s sale to a bona fide purchaser for value. Matter of Hu (Lowbet Realty Corp.), 2018 NY Slip Op 03529 [1st Dept May 16, 2018].

Title companies across the city undoubtedly breathed a sigh of relief.

Lowbet Realty involves one of the most brazen, contemptuous heists of corporate assets amidst a dissolution proceeding you’ll ever encounter. The shorter version — click here and here for more detailed accounts in my two prior posts about the case — is the story of an estranged husband and wife who co-owned a single-asset realty holding company known as Lowbet Realty Corp. formed in 1980 and managed solely by the 25% shareholder-wife as the titular president after the 75% shareholder-husband in 1995 returned to live in China permanently.

In 2006, the husband removed his wife as president and named himself and his son as sole officers, even while his wife continued for years afterward to control the property consisting of a 19-unit residential apartment building. In 2011, after the corporation was administratively dissolved for failure to file franchise reports, the husband filed a petition for judicial supervision of the corporation’s winding up and liquidation, at which time the court issued an order prohibiting both husband and wife from participating in the management of the realty or removing corporate assets absent court approval. Continue Reading Bona Fide Purchaser Avoids Rescission of Minority Shareholder’s Unauthorized Sale of Corporation’s Realty

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?

The Nobel Prize symbolizes the apex of human achievement in the arts and sciences. It is no guarantee, however, that its recipients are equally adept when it comes to their own business endeavors.

Dr. Günter Blobel, pictured accepting his Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1999 for his revolutionary work in molecular cell biology, shortly afterward formed a business venture with two others — one his research assistant, the other a corporate lawyer — to commercialize a patented process called Chromovert, used in cell discovery assays. Almost two decades later, their company, Chromocell Corp., appears to be flourishing.

Not so for Dr. Blobel’s relationship with his fellow shareholders, eventually naming them defendants in a lawsuit he brought in Manhattan Supreme Court, seeking to enforce an alleged oral agreement to equalize his ownership stake. It didn’t turn out well for Dr. Blobel, whose suit was dismissed earlier this year by Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Andrea Masley in Blobel v Kopfli, 2018 NY Slip Op 30298(U) [Sup Ct NY County Feb. 13, 2018].

Five days after the court’s decision, Dr. Blobel succumbed to cancer at the age of 81. Continue Reading No Prize for Nobel Laureate in Fight for Bigger Stake in Biotech Company

Lawyers are famous for arguing seemingly inconsistent positions at the same time. We practitioners lovingly refer to the technique as “arguing in the alternative.” The famous Texas trial lawyer, Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, gave a vivid example:

Say you sue me because you say my dog bit you. Well, this is my defense: My dog doesn’t bite. And second, in the alternative, my dog was tied up that night. And third, I don’t believe you really got bit. And fourth, I don’t have a dog.

A litigator’s stock in trade, arguing multiple positions at once can be vital to advance the client’s interests and to preserve arguments for later appellate review. Sometimes, though, one comes across arguments so seemingly in tension that they don’t quite seem able to coexist. A recent appellate decision, Alam v Uddin, 2018 NY Slip Op 02763 [2d Dept Apr. 25, 2018], involved a rather odd array of apparently conflicting arguments on both sides. Continue Reading Corporate Frankenstein “Partnership to Form a Corporation” Lives Another Day

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?