Benjamin Means

Subscribe to Benjamin Means via RSS

Ben Means

Business divorce on steroids. That’s how I describe the tenor of litigation that can erupt when members of a family-owned business have a falling out.

No one has devoted more scholarship to the challenging intersection of law and conflict in the family-owned business than Benjamin Means, Associate Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law.

Longtime readers of this blog may recall a two-part online interview of Ben that I posted a few years ago (read here and here), in which he answered a series of questions about his groundbreaking law review article entitled Non-Market Values in the Family Business. The article uses social science and expansive notions of contractual relations in advocating for courts to give greater weight to what he calls “family values” in adjudicating corporate dissolution and other disputes among shareholder-members of the same family.
Continue Reading Conflict in the Family-Owned Business: Interview With Professor Benjamin Means

Tom Rutledge, one of the country’s leading lawyers and commentators on business organizations, recently published a fascinating article on minority shareholder oppression in which he challenges whether courts ought to provide remedies for terminated at-will employees who also happen to be minority shareholders. Read about it in this week’s New York Business Divorce. …
Continue Reading You’re Fired! No, I’m Oppressed!

A must-read decision last week by Justice Elizabeth Emerson in Federico v Brancato highlights the unique attributes and challenges of resolving conflicts within family-owned businesses. You won’t want to miss it in this week’s New York Business Divorce.
Continue Reading When Parents Have to Choose: Succession Planning and the Family-Owned Business

This week’s New York Business Divorce continues with Part Two of my interview with law professor and legal scholar Benjamin Means whose latest article applies legal and social science theories to the special problems afflicting the family owned business.
Continue Reading Interview with Law Professor Benjamin Means on Conflict in Family-Owned Businesses: Part Two

This week’s New York Business Divorce features Part One of a two-part online interview with law professor Benjamin Means, who has written a number of scholarly articles on shareholder oppression, and whose most recent article, called Non-Market Values in Family Businesses, applies Ben’s critical analysis to the special considerations attendant to oppression actions and conflict resolution within family-owned businesses. You won’t want to miss it! …
Continue Reading Interview with Law Professor Benjamin Means on Conflict in Family-Owned Businesses: Part One