Excessive Compensation: What to do when the co-owners of your business pay themselves excessively
Building and Exiting Business Partnerships
When a co-shareholder purchases the debt obligations of the company without partners' knowledge
What happens when a majority owner makes a bad-faith capital call?
Making the Lawyer-Client Relationship Work in Challenging Litigation – Speaking of Litigation Video Podcast
Prelude to the Business Court and 15th Court of Appeals: More Questions Than Answers | Tyler Talbert | Texas Appellate Law Podcast
Navigating Corporate Divorce With Michael Einbinder
Business Courts and Other Highlights of the 88th Texas Legislature | Jerry Bullard | Texas Appellate Law Podcast
Physician Partnership Agreements: Setting Yourself Up for Success
An Inside Look as a Juror - FCRA Focus Podcast
I Wish I Knew What I Know Now: Conversations with AGG on FDA Issues - Business Divorces in the Food and Supplements Space
How can an emergency injunction save your business?
Law Brief ®: Alan Gaynor and Richard Schoenstein Explore Business Divorce
Navigating the LLC Jungle - I Know a Lawyer Podcast
Episode 5: Business Divorce, Delaware Style
CorpCast Episode 7: Better Know a Judge: the Honorable Mary M. Johnston of the Delaware Superior Court
Paths to Dispute Resolution
What is arbitration?
Should any business sign a contract that includes an arbitration clause?
How This Investment Firm Hopes to Revolutionize Litigation in America
Throwing the baby out with the bath water is a pithy expression that suggests exercising caution when business partners in private companies are seeking to achieve a business divorce. The majority owner and the departing...more
An Accountant based in Atlanta, Georgia provided valuable advice to a new Client who was starting a kitchen design business with a business partner....more
There are approximately 16,000 companies registered in Bermuda, of which approximately 14,000 are international companies. As a result, Bermuda is a jurisdiction which deals with a large number of corporate governance...more
I spend a lot of my time representing business owners in disputes with their business partners. As part of that job, I have an opportunity to see the variety of ways in which one business owner tries to rip off another...more
We explore the trends for Business and Commercial Disputes in the UK, US and France/EU in 2025. Here's what you should know...more
In recent years, the headlines have tracked the news of high-profile breakups among business partners in private companies. These business partner fallouts include: - 2023: Sam Altman was ousted as Open AI CEO (for...more
One of the first business divorce cases that I participated in as a young litigator was a lengthy arbitration over whether a minority shareholder was oppressed under BCL 1104-a. With those fond memories, evolution of the...more
I focus my practice on commercial litigation and in particular on representing business owners in disputes with their business partners. As part of my job I get to see a whole variety of ways that business people attempt to...more
My last few posts have been devoted to the Court of Appeal's opinion in Tuli v. Specialty Surgical Center of Thousand Oaks, LLC, 2024 WL 4499271 (Oct. 16, 2024). The case relates to the plaintiff's "decade-long litigation...more
The shareholder oppression claim under BCL 1104-a has a unique relationship with claims for money damages. A minority shareholder petitioning for dissolution under BCL 1104-a must establish that the majority shareholders...more
On 29 July 2024, an ICC arbitration tribunal, chaired by Stephen Drymer and including Jean Kalicki and Charles Adams as co-arbitrators, issued, by majority, an award in favour of the Government of Georgia in a high-profile...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
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
“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
In my business divorce practice I deal with many closely held corporations that have only a few or perhaps just two shareholders, each of whom is actively involved in running the business. Within that category are many...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
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
On October 31, 2023, Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery issued final judgment denying a petition for a mootness fee award to a stockholder—who had previously asserted claims for breach of...more
The corporation of which you are a shareholder just sent you notice that it plans to merge with another corporation. And although the other existing shareholders will have their shares exchanged for shares of the new...more
If you are the owner of a business that does not have a buy-sell agreement in place, or you have not reviewed your buy-sell agreement recently, it may be time to sit down with your attorney. Buy-sell agreements can be complex...more
In Bhatnagar v. Cresco Labs Inc., 2023 ONCA 401, the Ontario Court of Appeal elaborated on the Supreme Court’s decision in C.M. Callow Inc. v. Zollinger, 2020 SCC 45 (“Callow”) and clarified that a breach of the contractual...more
For months, if not years, you received distribution checks from the business in which you own an interest. The funds came without question and like clockwork. You relied on them. Then suddenly, they stopped coming. Is this...more
Disputes regarding ownership interests often arise in the context of closely held corporations, particularly when directors, officers, or majority shareholders sell or acquire ownership interests in the company. These...more
That was the interesting, infrequently-litigated question addressed in a recent decision by Manhattan Commercial Division Justice Melissa A. Crane. Simon v FrancInvest, S.A. (2023 NY Slip Op 32422[U] [Sup Ct, NY County...more
California’s common law “business judgment rule,” as described by the courts, protects from court intervention “those management decisions which are made by directors in good faith in what the directors believe is the...more