In the first of a two-part series, this week’s New York Business Divorce looks at the Delaware Chancery Court’s important decision last month in Auriga Capital v. Gatz in which Chancellor Leo Strine, Jr. sets forth an analytic framework for imposition of fiduciary duties on managers of Delaware LLCs. Next week’s post will compare the law governing fiduciary duties of New York LLC managers.
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Continue Reading What Does Chancellor Strine’s Auriga Capital Decision Teach Us About Fiduciary Duties of New York LLC Managers? (Part One)

Dissension between members of a family-owned business can present especially difficult issues when litigation erupts. This week’s New York Business Divorce highlights recent decisions by Justices Timothy Driscoll (Nassau County), Emily Pines (Suffolk County) and Deborah Kaplan (Manhattan) involving dissolution and related claims among warring family members.
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Continue Reading A Toxic Mix of Family and Business

A recent decision by Queens County Commercial Division Justice Orin Kitzes in Matter of Adelstein illustrates the crucial role of forensic accounting in testing and adjusting a company’s financial statements for purposes of stock valuation in an oppressed minority shareholder case. Read more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Continue Reading Forensic Accounting Helps Wins the Day in Oppressed Shareholder Stock Valuation Proceeding

Those interested in the evolving law of LLC dissolution won’t want to miss this week’s New York Business Divorce featuring a case called Mizrahi v. Cohen decided last week by Justice Carolyn Demarest in which she ordered dissolution of a financially failing real estate holding company.
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Continue Reading Court Orders Dissolution of Unprofitable Real Estate LLC

An appellate ruling last month in DeMatteo v. DeMatteo Salvage Co. brings to a close the cautionary tale of an 8-year court battle among members of a family-owned business over the enforcement of a poorly designed buy-sell agreement. It’s in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Continue Reading An Ill-Fated Solution to an Ill-Fated Buy-Sell Agreement

The New York Court of Appeals sidestepped the issue of LLC promoter liability for pre-formation nondisclosure in its decision last week in Roni LLC v. Arfa. It’s in this week’s New York Business Divorce, which also pays tribute to the late Professor Larry Ribstein.
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Continue Reading With a Whimper, Not a Bang: New York’s Top Court Rules on LLC Promoter Liability

Dueling corporate dissolution petitions? The petitioner demanding that he be allowed to buy out the respondent? Sounds odd, but that’s what happened in Matter of Carson, decided last week by the Appellate Division, Third Department, and featured in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Continue Reading The Case of the Dueling Dissolution Petitions: Who Can Buy Out Whom?

With about 1,300 pizzerias in New York City, it’s inevitable that some of them wind up the subject of involuntary corporate dissolution proceedings, such as the one recently decided by Nassau Commercial Division Justice Ira Warshawsky in Matter of DiMaria involving a petition brought by a minority owner alleging shareholder oppression and majority owners counter-alleging that the petitioner himself engaged in wrongful conduct. Learn more in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Continue Reading Pizza Wars of the Shareholder Kind

A decision last week by the Appellate Division, First Department, in Lehey v. Goldburt brings to light a bitter dispute between the managing member of a vodka distributor with a gimmicky bottle featuring an LED ticker display, and an investor claiming that his millions in funding have been squandered. Get the story in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
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Continue Reading Appellate Court Reinstates LLC Manager in Dispute with Investor in Vodka Venture