assignee

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Let me say up front, I don’t claim to know the answer to the question posed in this post’s title, or pretend there’s a simple yes-or-no answer. It very well may be that the answer depends on the unique facts and circumstances in any given case, including the one discussed below.

Having said that, take a look at a Schedule K-1 in the tax return of a limited liability company. I’ll make it easy; click here for the 2017 K-1 form available on the IRS’s website. Now tell me, in the Part II “Information About the Partner” section of the form, do you see a check box for a taxpayer who is a non-member/assignee/holder of an economic interest in an LLC?

That’s right, you don’t. As pertains to LLCs, the only choices are “LLC member-manager” or “other LLC member.”

I’m not a tax expert, but I’m fairly confident it makes no difference whether one or the other of those boxes is checked for a non-member assignee of an LLC interest, at least for tax purposes. But it can make a night-and-day difference for state law purposes to a litigant seeking to enforce rights as the assignee of a membership interest — be it to secure judicial dissolution, to enforce management, voting or inspection rights, or to prosecute derivative claims — and who relies solely on a K-1 as proof of his, her, or its member status.

It makes a difference because, under New York statutory and case law, absent provision in an operating agreement to the contrary, an assignee, non-member holder of an economic interest in an LLC has no standing to assert any of those rights or to obtain any of those remedies.

I’ve encountered the issue a number of times in my business divorce travels, almost always involving LLCs with no written operating agreement and that don’t observe governance formalities. It’s also an issue that surfaced in a recent decision in which the court held that the plaintiff, whose complaint asserts both direct and derivative claims for breach of fiduciary duty, and who was not an original member of the subject LLC and acquired his interest by undocumented assignment, established his member status based on his K-1, apparently in the absence of any written agreement with the other members or other evidence of any formal consent to his admission as a member. Rosin v Schnitzler, 2018 NY Slip Op 32320(U) [Sup Ct Kings County Sept. 4, 2018]. Continue Reading Is a Schedule K-1 By Itself Enough to Prove LLC Membership?

The sudden death of Alexander Calderwood, the brilliant but troubled co-founder of the Ace brand of hotels, resulted in some fierce litigation between Calderwood’s estate and Calderwood’s LLC co-member over the nature of his estate’s membership interest in the company after his death. The litigation came to a head earlier this month, when Justice Barbara R. Kapnick issued a scholarly decision for a unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, First Department in Estate of Calderwood v ACE Group Int’l, LLC, 2017 NY Slip Op 08750 [1st Dept Dec. 14, 2017].

Boiled down, the question on appeal was whether, under Delaware law, Calderwood’s estate was a bona fide member of the LLC with all of a member’s associated rights and privileges, or instead, a mere assignee of Calderwood’s membership interest. As written about in a post last Spring (read here), New York County Commercial Division Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich issued a decision dismissing most of the Estate’s amended complaint, holding that the Estate lacked membership status in the LLC upon Calderwood’s death. Let’s see how the appeals court considered the issue. Continue Reading Delaware Contractarian Principles Prevail in Appeal Over Deceased Ace Hotel Founder’s LLC Interest

I wish I could take credit for it, but I can’t. The phrase “bare naked assignee” was coined by the preeminent scholar and LLC maven Professor Daniel Kleinberger whose massive oeuvre (not to mention his guest posts on this blog here and here) includes a wonderful article published in 2009 called The Plight of the Bare Naked Assignee (available here on SSRN ). As described in the abstract, the article addresses the “new and separate opportunity for oppression” that “exists because LLC law purports to (1) recognize a species of persons holding legal rights vis-á-vis the LLC (assignees) while (2) denying those persons any remedies whatsoever in connection with those rights.”

Under the LLC statutes in New York and most other states, except as otherwise provided in the operating agreement, LLC membership interests are freely assignable in whole or in part. As the Professor’s article explains, the bedrock “pick your partner” principle of partnership law found expression in the default rules of LLC statutes which, contrary to traditional corporation laws, require majority (or unanimous) consent of the other LLC members for an assignee to become a full-fledged member with both economic and voting/management rights. Typical of these statutes, New York’s LLC Law § 603 provides that, absent such consent, the assignee has no right to participate in LLC management “or to exercise any rights or powers of a member” and only has the right “to receive, to the extent assigned, the distributions and allocations of profits and losses to which the assignor would be entitled.”

The vast majority of written operating agreements that I’ve encountered include detailed articles addressing the rights of members to assign (or not) their membership interests and, when permitted, what if any rights non-member assignees possess other than the right to receive distributions and profit/loss allocations. Of course, absent an operating agreement, the rights of an assignee are governed by the statutory default rules.

The Professor’s article broadly discusses theory and case law surrounding the difficulties faced by non-member assignees a/k/a transferees — oftentimes the heir of a deceased member — when it comes to protecting their economic interests against managerial abuse by the LLC’s controllers. My focus here addresses only one, narrow aspect of such protection, namely, the ability of a non-member assignee to inspect LLC records in the absence of dispositive rules in an operating agreement or, as in what I believe is a small minority of states including Texas, a statute giving assignees inspection rights. Continue Reading Can the Bare Naked Assignee Demand Access to LLC Records?

consentThe pick-your-partner principle is universally embedded in the default rules of limited liability company enabling acts, including Sections 601 through 604 of the New York LLC Law which permit free assignment of distributional and other economic rights appurtenant to a membership interest but require the other members’ consent before an assignee is granted full member status with voting and other rights associated with membership in an LLC.

The distinction between a “mere” assignee versus a transferee with member status can become a battle ground when a putative LLC member who received his, her or its interest by assignment brings legal action against the LLC’s managers for dissolution, access to books and records, or asserting derivative claims on behalf of the LLC. That’s because by statute and/or common law, the suing party’s requisite legal standing to assert such claims depends on having member status.

A recent decision by Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Saliann Scarpulla in MFB Realty LLC v Eichner, 2016 NY Slip Op 31242(U) [Sup Ct NY County June 24, 2016], in which she dismissed derivative claims by a mere assignee of LLC interests, starkly illustrates the distinction and the importance of compliance with the LLC agreement’s provisions for bestowing member status on assignees. Continue Reading Operating Agreement’s Two-Step Consent Provision Foils Assignment of LLC Member Interest

The rules of standing to seek judicial dissolution of closely held New York business corporations can be confusing. Correction: they are confusing.

Here I’m not referring to disputes over whether someone is a shareholder at all, or holds a specific percentage. I’ve posted many an article on this blog about dissolution cases in which the petitioner’s stock ownership was challenged for lack of documentation and/or as inconsistent with the entity’s organic instruments, tax returns and other business records.

Rather, I’m referring to the statutory criteria for standing and the judicial application of those criteria to situations in which a challenge is raised concerning whether a particular, otherwise-uncontested ownership interest confers eligible holder status as to the entity whose dissolution is sought.

Let’s start with the statutes.

Section 1104 of the Business Corporation Law.  This statute authorizes a petition for judicial dissolution based on director or shareholder deadlock and internal dissension brought by “the holders of shares representing one-half of the votes of all outstanding shares of a corporation entitled to vote in an election of directors.” Note that the statute requires the petitioner to own voting shares, and that it specifies a 50% voting interest — no more, no less. Continue Reading Understanding Standing in Corporate Dissolution Cases

The rules surrounding the death of a partner or a shareholder are familiar to most practitioners. For general partnerships governed by New York’s Uniform Partnership Act, except as otherwise provided by agreement, a partner’s death automatically triggers dissolution and liquidation, unless the surviving partners continue the business in which event they are required to pay the estate the fair market value of the deceased partner’s interest. (The rules are different in states that have enacted the Revised Uniform Partnership Act.)

For close corporations, except as otherwise provided by agreement, the deceased stockholder’s shares may freely be transferred to his or her heirs as provided by will or intestacy laws, in which event the transferee (and, in the interim, the estate representative) possesses the full panoply of voting and other statutorily enshrined rights including the right to bring a shareholder’s derivative action and the right to petition for judicial dissolution.

What about limited liability companies? Are the rules that apply following the death of an LLC member more like those for partnerships or corporations?

The answer is, neither. LLCs have their own, distinct, statutory default rules applicable when a member dies. In addition, as illustrated by a recent decision discussed below, the disposition and rights associated with the membership interest of a deceased member are uniquely amenable to the preferences of the LLC members as expressed in the operating agreement.

Continue Reading Death of an LLC Member