Articles Tagged with judicial dissolution

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  • The removal of a member from a limited liability company, known as involuntary dissociation, is permitted by statute in most states and may also be permitted in an operating agreement.

  • Removal is permitted when a member has engaged in wrongful conduct that has or will materially affect the company or when the member has repeatedly breached the operating agreement.

  • Removal may also be permitted when a member files for bankruptcy or if it is not reasonably practicable for the LLC to continue with them as a member.

There are plenty of choices that we make in our lives that we would like to undo. Some we can and some we can’t. Breaking up with a business partner is the topic of this discussion. More particularly, how a member of a limited liability company can be expelled from the business. We’ll cover the circumstances in which members can be expelled, when it’s easy and when it’s not.

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    • A business divorce is the process by which the owners of a business separate their business interests.  The process involves negotiation and may also require litigation.

    • These cases can be divided into four phases: the emergent phase, the examination phase, the valuation phase and the resolution phase.

    • Most owner lawsuits end in a negotiated transaction because it gives the parties more flexibility over the manner in which the case is resolved.

We’re going to look at business divorce in terms of the four phases that the typical case goes through from its start to the time that is resolved, either through settlement or trial.We should start with the most basic definition of what is a business divorce. I use the term to describe the process by which people who were in a business together disentangle themselves. Continue reading

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  • ‘Business Divorce’ refers to disputes in which the owners of a closely held business, whether a corporation, limited liability company, partnership or limited partnership, must separate their business interests.

  • In many cases, such as oppressed minority shareholder cases or oppressed LLC member cases, there are allegations that those in control of the company have engaged in wrongful behavior.  In other cases, the deadlock of the owners on an important issue is the source of the dispute.

  • Courts that hear business divorce cases have the ability to intervene and impose short-term relief, such as an injunction or appointment of a custodian, and a permanent remedy, including the sale of the business, the compelled purchase of an owner’s interest or even the dissolution and liquidation of the enterprise.

 

achievement-agreement-body-language-1179804-1024x600No one gets married expecting to get divorced.  And no one forms a business expecting that it will fall apart.  Just as people get divorced, many businesses come to the point at which a business divorce is the best alternative because the partners cannot, or will not, continue to work together.  When that happens, the parties need to restructure, and often separate, their business interests.

Business Divorce Defined

We use the term business divorce to describe a series of different types of lawsuits that involve the owners of a closely held business. The defining character of the business divorce is that co-owners of a business must separate their business interests.  There are typically two alternatives.  Either one or more of the owners exits the business as part of a sale, or the business itself will be sold.  While much of the business divorce litigation in the courts today is in the form of an action for involuntary dissolution of the business, it is the rare case in which the business actually dissolves by settling its debts and selling its assets.  There are far better alternatives.  In this article, we focus on the closely held corporation.  Some of the principles are similar with other types of businesses, which we address in other articles, but the application of the principles are often quite different.

The law varies from state to state and much of this discussion is general.  To the extent that we discuss specific state laws that apply to business divorce, we focus on New York, New Jersey and Delaware law. Continue reading

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  • New York does not recognize a cause of action for minority oppression of a member of a limited liability company.

  • Judicial dissolution is a remedy available to the minority LLC member when the majority is unwilling or unable to promote the purpose of the company or continuing the business has become financially not feasible.

Oppressed Minority LLC Member LawyerThe dismissal of a judicial dissolution claim brought by an LLC member seeking to dissolve the family business demonstrates the difficulty that an oppressed minority LLC member faces under New York law.

New York does not recognize a cause of action for minority oppression under its limited liability company statute, and so a trial judge in New York County made quick dismissal of a claim for involuntary judicial dissolution based on the allegations of a minority member that he was being treated unfairly.  The plaintiff’s attorneys missed the mark and failed to assert other significant claims suggested by the facts alleged in the complaint.

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  • Courts use their authority to appoint a custodian to take control of a closely held corporation as a remedy to deadlocked directors or shareholders.
  • A showing of serious or irreparable harm is required before a court will intervene in a deadlock among shareholders or directors; more than dissension is required.
  • A court may direct a custodian to dissolve and liquidate a corporation, or sell the entire business as a going concern, in the best interest of the shareholders and other constituencies like employees.

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Appointing a custodian or receiver of a closely held corporation is a recognized remedy when the owners are deadlocked.  Once appointed, the custodian or receiver may be given wide authority to break the deadlock, to manage, to sell or dissolve the corporation — including cases in which the remedy seems to go beyond what is provided in the statute.

A Series Examining Deadlock Among the Owners of Closely Held Corporations, Limited Liability Companies and Partnerships

A bitter business divorce between two former college sweethearts provided the background for the Delaware Supreme Court’s analysis of the circumstances in which it could provide a dissolution-like remedy and order the sale of a large successful business.

INTERVIEW

The decision of the Delaware Chancery Court, Shawe v. Elting, involved Transperfect Global, Inc., a corporation formed by Elizabeth Elting and Philip Shawe in 1992 while the pair lived together in a New York University dorm room.  The two became the co-CEOs, sole directors and equal owners of a company that provided a variety of translation services from locations around the globe, generating $80 million in profits in 2014. (Shaw later transferred 1 percent to his mother, but she remained firmly in his camp, which caused the deadlock to continue.) Continue reading

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  • Deadlock is more than an inability to make a decision.  It is an inability to act under circumstances that present the real threat of harm to the business.
  • Deadlock is triggered by the shareholders’ inability to elect directors.
  • When there are no alternatives to prevent harm to the business, like a buy-sell agreement, a Court is likely to find that the shareholders or directors are deadlocked.

For the closely held corporation, deadlock may be the result of a dispute among the shareholders, or among the directors in circumstances that the shareholders cannot fix by electing new directors.  Whether a court is asked to find deadlock under an applicable corporations statute or as part of a common-law remedy, deadlock is rarely found in circumstances in which there is no threat of significant or irreparable harm.

In this article, we will consider some of the circumstance in which courts have been asked to declare that a deadlock exists among the directors and/or shareholders of a corporation – often in a closely held corporation they are one and the same – and to fashion a remedy.  Most often the principal remedy in theINTERVIEW case of a “true deadlock” is the dissolution of the corporation, which entails the liquidation of the entity.  Courts rarely impose such an extreme remedy on a viable business entity, so such remedies as the sale of a minority interest, sale of the entity as a going concern or other types of injunctive relief are far more common.

A Series Examining Deadlock Among the Owners of Closely Held Corporations, Limited Liability Companies and Partnerships

Corporations statues vary in the statutory remedy for deadlock or oppression.  The Model Business Corporations Act (MBCA), on which many state corporations codes are modeled, provides for the judicial dissolution of a corporation when the shareholders are unable to elect directors or when the directors are deadlocked in the management of corporate affairs; the shareholders cannot break the deadlock; and there is either the potential for irreparable harm to the corporation, or the “business and affairs of the corporation” cannot be conducted to the advantage of the shareholders.  MCBA § 14.30. The model act also provides a court with broad powers to appoint a custodian to manage and/or wind up the affairs of the corporation.  MCBA §§ 7.48; 14.32. Continue reading

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Joint Venture Litigation Attorneys
A partnership has no obligation to complete performance of its executory contracts, the Texas Court of appeals held in affirming a multi-million dollar trial court verdict involving a chain of TGI Fridays in Dallas.

The case involved a joint venture formed with TGI Fridays and several entites that qualified as “disadvantaged.” The joint venture operated restaurants in four Dallas International Airport terminals from 1995, but as a result of changes in FAA regulations and disputes among the joint venture participants, the enterpise began to unravel in 2004.

The case was tried to a jury, which apportioned substantial awards of damages and attorneys fees and found that good cause existed for the dissolution of the business in that it was no longer reasonably practicable to carry on the business in conformity with its governing documents.

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Oppressed Shareholder Litigation Attorney
New York’s oppressed shareholder statute has a unique provision that was initially intended to prevent the oppressed shareholder from destroying a viable business.  That is because the New York statute otherwise gives the court only two options: send the oppressed shareholder away or force the dissolution of the business.

Other states give court’s more discretion, and a judge also has the ability to force a sale of an interest.  New York’s statutory scheme, however, takes a different approach.  (See our discussion here of some of the quirks of New York’s oppressed shareholder statute:  Business Divorce New York Style.)  One of the wrinkles in the statute, however, is that once a litigant invokes the oppressed shareholder provision in Business Corporations Law § 1104-a, it’s very difficult to stop the process.

Peter Mahler’s New York Business Divorce blog reports on an decision by a trial judge in Nassau County’s commercial part who declines to allow the plaintiff to withdraw a claim under BCL 1104-a.  In that case, the plaintiff tried to get out of the substantive and procedural limitations that flow from the conclusory assertion of a claim under 1104-a.

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american-chopper

I don’t like reality TV, but I will admit that I thought the fights between the Paul Teutul Sr. and his son, Paul Jr., were the most interesting part of the show. Now that they are involved in litigation over the ownership of the company, I suppose I can take a professional interest.

The complex dynamics between the majority shareholder, Paul Sr., and the minority shareholder, Paul Jr., have all the elements of the disputes that have fractured many a family business – conflict over the direction of the business, claims of misconduct and, of course, charged emotions. You will also find something else in this case that is not all that rare – documents that do not clearly explain how the parties are to deal with sensitive issues.

https://youtu.be/ZgRl_b3GfyI

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