Articles Tagged with sale of business

Shareholder Deadlock AttorneyIs an intractable deadlock among the shareholders good grounds to force the sale of a large, successful corporation? That was the issue before the Delaware Supreme Court in a case in which the trial court’s decision to sell the business as a going concern – over the objection of one shareholder –was affirmed by the Supreme Court.

In this case, a trial court’s ability to fashion and equitable remedy based on the circumstances of the case ran into direct conflict with the limited remedies that are available to minority shareholders under Delaware law.

Court Orders Sale of Corporation in Shareholder Deadlock

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The last-minute motion of a 50-percent shareholder to prevent the sale of a business as part of an oppressed shareholder lawsuit was insufficient to block the receiver from proceeding with the transaction, according to a New Jersey appellate court.

The opinion in Georgiadis v. Georgiadis, Docket No.: A-4018-08 (App. Div. June 21, 2010) demonstrates the ability of a chancery judge to manage a business divorce and fashion an equitable remedy based on the facts of the case, and the deference that the appellate courts give to those decisions.

The lawsuit arose between two brothers who owned equal shares in a diner in Mountainside. One of the brothers left the business to run another diner in Connecticut.  When that diner closed, his brother refused to let him return to the business in Mountainside and an oppressed shareholder action followed.  The defendant brother filed a counter claim and the case was tried in 2007.

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