In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about a recent appeals court decision in which an elderly male business founder alleged he was ousted from the company and his reputation smeared based upon false allegations of sexual harassment allegedly solicited by a hostile male CEO. Do these allegations equate to a viable claim for breach of fiduciary duty against the CEO? Find out in this week’s New York Business Divorce. …
Continue Reading #MeToo and Business Divorce: The Flip Side

Earlier this month the Connecticut Supreme Court handed down an important, first impression decision construing RULLCA’s provision granting members of manager-managed LLCs the right to inspect books and records. Read more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading The Nutmeg State Out Front on Member Inspection Rights Under RULLCA

In this week’s New York Business Divorce, we consider a recurring problem with LLC operating agreements: enforceability of the writing when it is unexecuted or partially executed. A growing body of case law finds such agreements at least potentially enforceable absent an expression of intent to the contrary. Read about that issue, and related issues of due execution of operating agreements, in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Cooked or Raw? Enforceability of Partly Signed Operating Agreements

In an unusual case, a divided California appellate panel recently grappled with the application of minority and marketability discounts in a statutory appraisal proceeding triggered by a buyout election in a proceeding brought for judicial dissolution of an LLC, where the governing statute utilizes the fair market value standard instead of the more typical fair value standard. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Statutory Buyouts and Discounts Under the Fair Market Value Standard: An Awkward Pair?

Father against son, half-brother against half-brother, are the players in a recent courtroom drama that unfolded in Matter of Brady v. Brady, culminating with an appellate panel’s affirmance of a lower court’s order dissolving a family-owned close corporation that owns extensive farm land in upstate New York. Find out more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading This Is Not Your Father’s Brady Bunch

Preliminary injunctions are a powerful tool in the business divorce litigator’s toolbox, and they often involve a race to the courthouse. This week’s post offers a reminder that sometimes, that race is critical; courts will be more inclined to preserve the status quo with a preliminary injunction than to undo action with one.  …
Continue Reading Too Little, Too Late: Court Sides with Ousted Member, but Denies Preliminary Injunction Undoing Termination

In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about the history and development of the doctrine of tax estoppel, including two strands of competing case law emanating from a pair of New York State Court of Appeals decisions reaching opposite conclusions about the extent to which one may prove ownership status in a closely-held business based upon estoppel.
Continue Reading The Doctrine of Tax Estoppel in Ownership Status Disputes

Paul Hood, one of the leading experts on buy-sell agreements, has a new book on the subject highlighted in this week’s New York Business Divorce and also featured in an interview with Paul on a new episode of the Business Divorce Roundtable podcast.
Continue Reading Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Buy-Sell Agreements: A Conversation With Paul Hood

A corporation and a dissident shareholder enter into agreement where the dissident shareholder agrees to receive regular payments in exchange for staying away from the Company’s business. What happens when the outspoken shareholder dies? In Stile v C-Air Customhouse Brokers-Forwards, Inc., Index No. 656575/2020 [Sup Ct, New York County 2021], the New York County Supreme Court declined to dismiss a suit by the estate of a shareholder subject to a stay away settlement agreement on the grounds that the stay away obligations did not expressly apply to the shareholder’s successors.
Continue Reading Stay Away Settlement Between Closely-Held Corporation and Dissident Shareholder Goes Away Upon Shareholder’s Death