Does an LLC’s member’s pulling the trigger on a shotgun buy-sell agreement foreclose a petition for deadlock-based dissolution? Not if the members can’t agree on the terms of the sale, holds Vice Chancellor Slights. …
Continue Reading Holes in Shotgun Buy-Sell Agreement Keep Deadlock Dissolution Petition Alive

There are few issues involving LLCs more likely to generate litigation than the expulsion of a member, especially when the expelled member is denied any payout for its interest, as occurred in the case highlighted in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading Be Careful What You Say. It May Get You Expelled From Your LLC.

A decision last week by the Appellate Division, First Department, highlights the relatively precarious position of LLC minority members versus minority shareholders of close corporations when it comes to seeking remedies for alleged abuse by the LLC’s controlling member. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading The Money’s There But Out of Reach for the Minority LLC Member

In this week’s New York Business Divorce, we tackle two important legal issues for LLC owners. First, the circumstances in which an upon-death membership interest transfer provision in an unsigned, non-final operating agreement may be enforced. Second, whether a membership interest transfer provision in an operating agreement trumps a conflicting bequest in a last will and testament.
Continue Reading Unsigned, Non-Final Operating Agreement Trumps Conflicting Testamentary Bequest of LLC Interest

This week’s New York Business Divorce examines a recently decided case granting a petition for “equitable dissolution” by means of a forced buy-out of the respondent 50% shareholders of the close corporation that owns the famous Delmonico’s steak house in downtown Manhattan.
Continue Reading On the Menu: Steak and Equitable Dissolution

A recent decision by the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has created a split among the Circuits on the question whether federal District Courts should decline to adjudicate corporate dissolution actions under the Burford abstention doctrine. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading U.S. Circuit Courts Split on Abstention Doctrine in Dissolution Cases

Can the federal statute that brought down John Gotti also play a role in business divorce litigation? This week’s New York Business Divorce looks at the sparse and largely if not entirely unsuccessful role the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act a/k/a RICO has played in litigation between co-owners of closely held firms.
Continue Reading Civil RICO: A Blunt But Elusive Tool in Business Divorce Cases

In this week’s New York Business Divorce, learn if it’s possible to plead the existence of a viable oral partnership whose business operated in the form of a corporation or limited liability company. The short answer: yes it can be done, but it’s not easy to do.
Continue Reading The Oral Partnership Operating as a Corporation: Is it a Partnership? A Corporation? Can it be Both?

In this week’s New York Business Divorce, read about the unhappy consequences under the “informal dissolution” doctrine to befall a corporate director who effectuated the liquidation of a defunct corporation’s assets without providing statutory notice of dissolution to the entity’s creditors.
Continue Reading “Informal Dissolution” and Individual Liability

If man’s first sin was eating the apple, a business valuator’s greatest sin is mixing apples and oranges. In Dieckman v. Regency GP, LP, Chancellor Bouchard denied the Plaintiff’s bid for $1.6 billion in damages, even after finding that the defendant general partner breached the partnership agreement’s implied duty of good faith and fair dealing.  The decision rests on Chancellor Bouchard’s complete rejection of Plaintiff’s damages calculation on the grounds that it was akin to “comparing apples to oranges.”…
Continue Reading General Partner Breached Implied Covenants in Partnership Agreement, but Plaintiff’s “Apples-to-Oranges” Calculation Dooms Bid for Damages