Corporate Divorce – Preventing and Managing the Break-Up of a Business Partnership
Building and Exiting Business Partnerships
Navigating Corporate Divorce With Michael Einbinder
Episode 23: LLCs as They Approach the 50-Year Milestone: A Conversation with Professor Susan Pace Hamill
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Buy-Sell Agreements: A Conversation With Expert and Author Paul Hood
I Wish I Knew What I Know Now: Conversations with AGG on FDA Issues - Business Divorces in the Food and Supplements Space
Law Brief ®: Alan Gaynor and Richard Schoenstein Explore Business Divorce
Episode 8 | Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: Navigating the Domestic Relations Arena
Episode 021: Member Liquidity, Default Rules, and the Corporate-ization of LLCs: A Conversation with Dean Donald J. Weidner
Episode 17: Arbitrating Deadlock: A Conversation with Arbitrator Erica Garay
Episode 015: Confessions of a Business Appraiser: A Conversation with Chris Mercer
Episode 014: Business Divorce Stories: Business Appraiser Tony Cotrupe and Attorney Jeff Eilender
Spring is soon upon us. March Madness is at our doorstep. The Formula 1 season is underway. Baseball season will be in full swing shortly. And my allergies are already in bloom....more
Welcome to our 17th annual edition of the Top 10 business divorce cases featured on this blog over the past year. This year’s selections buck the trend of previous years in which cases involving limited liability...more
November was a whirlwind month for New York LLC litigation. It featured disputes over how to wind up a judicially dissolved LLC, a bitter intra-family emergency indemnification/advancement injunction, and the finale of a...more
There’s a ton of Delaware caselaw enforcing Section 18-1101 (c) of that state’s LLC Act as amended in 2004, authorizing LLC agreements to eliminate the members’ and managers’ liability for breach of fiduciary duty, the only...more
Here’s What Happened This dispute arose from the operations of 409 North Camden, LLC, which owns a two-story office building in Beverly Hills. The property's history dates back to 1963, when six friends purchased it as...more
The era of the old-fashioned general partnership long ago petered out, largely displaced by subchapter S corporations and, in the last few decades, limited liability companies, both of which allow pass-through taxation...more
In the world of business divorce litigation, this summer saw everything but a slowdown. We witnessed (and blogged about) Justice Crane cap a long-running fair value proceeding with helpful guidance on appraisals and...more
“It all started when the distributions stopped.” In my travels as a business divorce litigator, I’ve seen many disputes between LLC co-owners that begin with that message. A minority owner is content to remain a “silent...more
Welcome to this 14th annual edition of Summer Shorts. This year’s edition features brief commentary on three recent decisions by New York courts in business divorce cases. The featured cases involve a suit pitting three...more
Delaware Chancery Court’s contractarian approach to all things LLC, embedded statutorily in Section 18-1101(b) of the Delaware LLC Act (“It is the policy of this chapter to give the maximum effect to the principle of freedom...more
Just a few weeks ago, I commented on a recent uptick in disputes centered on the breakup of professional services firms. In those disputes, we expect that the demands of the legal, accounting, and medical professions draw...more
Count ’em: At the time A sued B for judicial dissolution of one of their several jointly owned companies, there are not one, not two, not three, but eight pending lawsuits between the two 50/50 business partners who first...more
“This case (and its many state-court siblings) has a tortured history,” is the opening line in Judge Subramanian’s decision. The “siblings” are five or so related lawsuits filed in New York State Supreme Court beginning in...more
Folks who’ve been following this blog for years know that periodically I like to venture beyond New York’s borders to find and report on interesting decisions from other states in business divorce cases....more
The last time we featured a notable decision on a claim for dissolution of a restaurant-operating LLC was in 2017, with a post by Frank McRoberts titled, “LLC’s Purpose Being Achieved? Business Doing Fine? Good Luck Getting...more
Last week, the Manhattan-based Appellate Division, First Department, handed down one of the more intriguing decisions by a New York court I’ve seen in a long time involving a dispute between LLC members....more
Jury trials in business divorce litigation are uncommon. Bifurcated business divorce jury trials are all but nonexistent. But in Aronov v Khavinson (81 Misc3d 1242(A) [Sup Ct, Kings County Feb. 9, 2024]), we encounter the...more
Capital contributions by business owners are the lifeblood of any newly formed business entity. Typically the lifeblood consists of cash, but not always. In many instances the contribution may consist of tangible (e.g., real...more
Parallel business divorce proceedings in the same or different courts alleging overlapping or duplicative claims are common. When it occurs, judges must often determine whether to dispose of one so the other may proceed...more
Some years are easier than others to select the most significant business divorce cases. In this, the 16th year I’ve published this top-10 list, the task is made especially difficult by a veritable flood of court decisions...more
In some cases, owners of an LLC provide in their Operating Agreements that any disputes involving the LLC or arising out of the Operating Agreement, including a business divorce, must be litigated in a private arbitration...more
The books and records demand often is the opening act in business divorce litigation. The relatively low burden that an owner must meet in order to obtain access to a company’s books and records, and the availability of an...more
I recently had the privilege of speaking to an audience of judges of the New York Supreme Court Commercial Division at Fordham Law School’s Eileen Bransten Institute on Complex Commercial Litigation. Naturally, the topic was...more
In a recently published opinion, Hacker v. Fabe, 92 Cal. App. 5th1267 (2023), the California Court of Appeal found that an LLC owner’s destruction of the company’s records was a substantial factor that subjected him to...more
The owners’ agreement is the backbone of the closely-held business. In intracompany LLC disputes, few things are more important than what the operating agreement has to say on the subject. As a consequence, the pages of...more