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
On this episode of “Splitting Heirs,” Warren K. Racusin talks with Lowenstein partner Nick San Filippo IV, Chair of the firm’s Business Divorce practice, and Jeff Savlov, a partner in the family business and wealth consulting...more
Buy-sell agreements come in all shapes and sizes. Some are straightforward. Others are outrageously complex, especially purchase price formulas. Some have triggers for death. Others disability. Retirement. Expulsion....more
“Under any standard of value, the true economic value of a business enterprise will equal the company’s accounting book value only by coincidence . . .” says the late business valuation expert and author Shannon Pratt. So...more
The distinction between direct and derivative claims pervades business divorce litigation. Whether a dissident owner’s claim against his or her co-owners is a direct claim (one that the owner can assert in their individual...more
The authors of this blog have a special affinity for fair value appraisal proceedings. The narrow hearings—where the sole issue before the court is the fair value of an owner’s interest in a business—require attorneys and...more
There is arguably no more prevalent legal claim in business divorces than a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty. Simply put (and I do mean simply), when one person owes a fiduciary duty to another, the person with the duty...more
Welcome to the 12th annual edition of Summer Shorts. This year’s edition features brief commentary on a handful of recent decisions by New York trial judges and appellate courts in a variety of business divorce cases...more
In 1950, Sam Hoffman and his two sons, Hyman and Melvin, founded Brooklyn-based Cornell Beverages, Inc. to manufacture and distribute seltzer. Those were the days when “seltzer men” made weekly home deliveries of cases of...more
.Setting up a private company on a 50-50 owned basis is typically a bad idea, but many founders of new businesses continue to embrace this perilous ownership structure. We wrote last year about problems that plague 50-50...more
Shareholder agreements and operating agreements contain a variety of knobs and levers, many of which a company’s founders hope never to invoke. Chief among them are the provisions for resolving disputes or deadlocks in...more
In Pinto Tech. Ventures, L.P. v. Sheldon, the Texas Supreme Court held that business tort claims, including breach of fiduciary duty, were subject to a forum-selection clause in a shareholders agreement. No. 16-0007, 2017 WL...more