New York Court Orders Dissolution of LLC - Recharacterizes Capital Contributions as Loans to Reach Equitable Result
An involuntary dissolution case was decided by the New York Supreme Court (the trial court) two weeks ago, on a petition for dissolution by one of the two members of a limited liability company. Mizrahi v. Cohen, No. 3865/10, 2012 WL 104775 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Jan. 12, 2012).
Background. Mizrahi and Cohen’s LLC owned a four-story commercial office building, with the ground floor rented by Cohen’s optometry business and the second floor rented by Mizrahi’s dental practice. The LLC consistently operated at a loss from 2006, the first year the building was occupied. The losses were covered by the members’ periodic capital contributions, although the LLC’s operating agreement didn’t require any additional capital contributions after the initial contributions. The two members each had a 50% ownership interest in the LLC, and initially they contributed additional capital in equal amounts. After a few years, however, Cohen’s capital contributions became sporadic and Mizrahi contributed most of the capital necessary to keep the LLC from defaulting on its mortgage. Over a span of several years Mizrahi contributed approximately $900,000 more than Cohen.
Mizrahi sued for dissolution of the LLC and an accounting of the proceeds of the company. The New York LLC Act uses the familiar standard for judicial dissolution: “it is not reasonably practicable to carry on the business in conformity with the articles of organization or operating agreement.” N.Y. Ltd. Liab. Co. Law § 702. (Washington and Delaware, for example, have similar provisions in their LLC statutes. RCW 25.15.275; Del. Code Ann. tit. 6, § 18-802.)
The Appellate Division held in 2010 that Section 702 requires that for dissolution to be ordered, the petitioner must show, “in the context of the terms of the operating agreement or articles of incorporation, that (1) the management of the entity is unable or unwilling to reasonably permit or promote the stated purpose of the entity to be realized or achieved, or (2) continuing the entity is financially unfeasible.” In re 1545 Ocean Ave., LLC, 72 A.D.3d 121, 131, 893 N.Y.S.2d 590 (N.Y. 2010).
Dissolution. The gist of the court’s analysis was that continuing the LLC was financially unfeasible because of (a) the significant losses incurred over the years, (b) Cohen’s failure to contribute equally in meeting the losses and his undermining the financial integrity of the LLC by unilaterally withdrawing $230,000 of his capital, and (c) the likelihood that it was only a matter of time, should Mizrahi exercise his right to refrain from making further capital contributions, until the LLC would default on its mortgage and the mortgage be foreclosed upon. Mizrahi, 2012 WL 104775, at *8.
The facts of the case and the court’s analysis are ably described in more detail by Peter Mahler in his New York Business Divorce law blog, here.
Accounting and Winding Up. Having determined that the LLC would be dissolved, the court discussed the accounting procedures to be followed and the winding up and distribution requirements of the LLC’s operating agreement. The operating agreement required that after payment to the LLC’s creditors and satisfaction of its liabilities, any remaining assets would be distributed to the members “according to their ownership interests,” i.e., 50% to each. There was no provision for returning a member’s capital, apparently on the assumption that the members would contribute capital in equal amounts, thus maintaining the 50/50 ratio for contributions as well as for their ownership interests.
But as it turned out, Mizrahi had contributed $900,000 more than Cohen. Ignoring that fact in the final 50/50 distribution would be consistent with the operating agreement but manifestly unfair. “[C]rediting the sums advanced by plaintiff to his capital account would work an inequitable result in that the Operating Agreement prevents the return of a Capital Contribution.” Id. at *11.
The court therefore ordered that Mizrahi’s capital contributions in excess of the amount of Cohen’s capital contributions would be treated as a loan to the LLC, to be repaid to Mizrahi as a debt of the LLC prior to the distributions to the members based on their 50/50 percentage of ownership. Id.
The court also ordered that Cohen’s $230,000 withdrawal from the LLC, whether treated as a loan or a capital withdrawal, would be applied to reduce the amount of any distribution to Cohen. Id. at *9.
The court’s resolutions of these two issues are clearly equitable and fair, but it is striking that the court gives no explanation or authority for either, other than its passing reference to avoiding an “inequitable” result. Trial courts have broad equitable powers, but one would have expected at least some citations to authority for the court’s application of those powers.
Colorado Court Reviews Classical and Modern Approaches to Anti-Assignment Clauses, and Holds That Assignment of Member's LLC Interest in Violation of Operating Agreement Is Void
Many LLC operating agreements prohibit or limit transfers of member interests. What’s the result if a member transfers its interest notwithstanding the operating agreement’s prohibition on transfers? Is the transfer void, in which case the transferee receives nothing? Or is the transfer effective, even though the transferor is in breach of the agreement and may be subject to a breach of contract claim by the LLC or other members? That was the question before the Colorado Supreme Court last month in Condo v. Conners, No. 10SC703, 2011 WL 6318980 (Colo. Dec. 19, 2011).
Thomas Banner was one of three members of Hut at Avon, LLC, a Colorado limited liability company. As part of a divorce settlement, Banner agreed to assign to Elizabeth Condo, his ex-wife, the right to receive monetary distributions on his LLC interest, and to vote against all issues that under the LLC agreement required unanimous consent unless his ex-wife directed otherwise. The LLC’s operating agreement limited the assignability of member interests, stating that “a Member shall not sell, assign, pledge or otherwise transfer any portion of its interest in” the LLC “without the prior written approval of all of the Members.” Id. at *5.
Banner contacted the two other members and requested approval of the proposed assignment. The two others objected, but Banner later went ahead without their consent, assigned his rights to his ex-wife, and promised to vote as required in the divorce settlement. When the two other members learned of the assignment they complained and offered to buy Banner’s interest in the LLC. Ultimately Banner sold his entire interest in the LLC to the two other members.
Condo then sued the two LLC members and their attorney for tortious interference with contract and civil conspiracy. She claimed that they conspired with Banner in bad faith to buy his interest at a “fire-sale” price, destroying the value of her right to receive Banner’s distributions and interfering with Banner’s assignment to her.
The trial court reasoned that Condo’s claims were dependent on the validity of the assignment, and found the assignment to be invalid because it was made without the consent of the two other members. The assignment was void as against public policy because the lack of consent from the other members constituted bad faith by Banner. The trial court therefore dismissed Condo’s tort claims. Condo appealed, and the Court of Appeals affirmed on other grounds. Id. at *4.
Colorado’s Supreme Court began by noting that the appeal turned on the validity of the Banner assignment, because Condo’s tort claims of interference and civil conspiracy with contract required the existence of a valid contract. The court then addressed the defendants’ argument that the LLC’s operating agreement should not be interpreted in accordance with prevailing contract law, but instead should be viewed as a constitution or a charter rather than a contract. As such, the operating agreement was claimed to restrict the power of a member to assign his interest, without regard to any potential exception found within contract law. The court disagreed, finding that the Colorado LLC Act and the language in the operating agreement established the operating agreement as a conventional, multilateral contract that should be interpreted in light of prevailing contract law principles. Id. at *5.
Condo did not dispute the restrictive language in the operating agreement or that the two other members never consented to Banner’s assignment. The gist of her argument was instead that (a) the restrictive clause limited only the assignment of duties, not the assignment of contractual rights, and (b) even if the assignment did violate the LLC agreement, it was still effective to convey the member interest to her, notwithstanding Banner’s breach of the restriction and his resulting exposure to a breach of contract claim by the LLC. Id.
The court briskly disposed of the contention that the restrictive clause applied only to duties and not to an assignment of rights to receive distributions. The court referred to the anti-assignment language in the operating agreement – “a Member shall not sell, assign, pledge or otherwise transfer any portion of its interest” (emphasis added) – and pointed out that the LLC Act’s definition of “membership interests” includes a member’s right to receive distributions. See Colo. Rev. Stat. § 7-80-102(10). The court found that the right to receive distributions was included within the broad prohibition on transfers of any portion of a membership interest. Condo, 2011 WL 6318980, at *6.
The court then examined whether the nonconforming assignment was void or whether it was legally effective despite its noncompliance with the anti-assignment clause. If Banner had no power to make the assignment, it was void and Condo’s interference claim failed. “If, in contrast, Banner had the power but not the right to make the assignment, the assignment can be said to have occurred – albeit wrongfully – and Condo’s present claims against the defendants may survive summary judgment.” Id. at *7.
The court reviewed what it termed the classical approach and the modern approach to anti-assignment clauses. In the classical approach, an assignment that violates an anti-assignment clause is void from the beginning because the assignor has no power to make the assignment. In the modern approach, by contrast, an anti-assignment clause is seen as creating a duty to refrain from making a nonconforming transfer, but not as limiting the transferor’s power to make the transfer. In the modern approach the unlawful transfer is not void but is a breach of the obligation not to transfer, which the LLC can then enforce with a suit for breach of contract.
Under the modern approach the unlawful transfer is void only if the anti-assignment clause specifically states that a nonconforming assignment is “void” or “invalid” (sometimes called the “magic words” approach). Id.
The court ultimately held that the LLC agreement’s anti-assignment clause rendered Banner powerless to assign any portion of his membership interest, and that Banner’s assignment was therefore void and could not support Condo’s claims of tortious interference with contract and civil conspiracy. Id. at *10. In reaching its conclusion the court relied on two principles to reach its conclusion: maximizing freedom of contract, and the “pick your partner” policy.
The court recognized the strong public policy of the LLC Act in favor of freedom of contract: “It is the intent of this article to give the maximum effect to the principle of freedom of contract and to the enforceability of operating agreements.” Colo. Rev. Stat. § 7-80-108(4). The court saw this policy as favoring the ability of a party to contractually restrict the ability of other parties to assign their rights. Condo, 2011 WL 6318980, at *8. The court also saw “a clear public policy in favor of allowing the members to tightly control who may receive either rights or duties under the operating agreement,” at least in the context of a closely held LLC. Id. at *9. The court was reluctant to force LLC members to deal with strangers with whom they had not contracted.
Although the court’s result appeared to reject the modern in favor of the classical approach, the court characterized its determination as a “facts and circumstances” analysis:
[W]e narrowly hold that the strict “magic words” approach is inapplicable to the present case. “Whether an attempted assignment … must fail because the rights or duties are of too personal a character is a question which turns upon the express or presumed intention of the parties, which must be ascertained from the entire contract, giving due consideration to the nature of the contract and the surrounding circumstances.”
Id. (ellipsis in original) (quoting 6 Am. Jur. 2d. Assignments § 27 (2011)).
The rule of the case is fairly clear for closely held LLCs, such as Hut at Avon (three members). Unfortunately it is not clear how to apply the court’s holding to other fact patterns. What facts and circumstances will be deemed relevant, when the court relied only on the pick-your-partner principle and freedom of contract in reaching its conclusions? As Justice Eid said in her concurring opinion, “The majority thus leaves open the possibility that, under different circumstances, the ‘modern approach’ might apply to an operating agreement with anti-assignment language similar to this one. This approach renders virtually every such anti-assignment provision open to challenge.” Id. at *12 (Eid, J., concurring) (citation omitted).
District Court Finds Common Law Fiduciary Duties Applicable to Wisconsin LLCs
LLCs are sufficiently new that issues of first impression continue to come up in various states. One of those issues is whether common law fiduciary duties apply to LLCs, when the state statute is silent or unclear. That was the situation in Wisconsin, when the defendants in a case before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin contended that common law fiduciary duties do not apply to Wisconsin LLCs and that they therefore owed no fiduciary duties to the plaintiff. Executive Ctr. III, LLC v. Meieran, No. 10-CV-263-JPS, 2011 WL 4704274 (E.D. Wis. Oct. 4, 2011).
The dispute arose out of the plaintiff’s $1.2 million purchase of an office building from BRIC Executive, LLC. In connection with the sale, BRIC agreed to lease office space back from the plaintiff (Executive Center). But BRIC defaulted on its lease obligations almost immediately and made no rent payments. Executive Center sued BRIC on the lease and obtained a judgment for $152,000, but BRIC was insolvent and never paid on the judgment.
Executive Center then investigated and learned that the defendants, part owners of BRIC, had been paid $400,000 by BRIC immediately after the closing of the real estate sale. BRIC paid the $400,000 to the defendants in order to redeem their part ownership in BRIC, under an agreement made by BRIC and the defendants 11 months before Executive Center’s real estate purchase.
Executive Center next sued the defendants in federal court, challenging the $400,000 transfer from BRIC to the defendants and seeking an award of damages. (The case was filed in federal court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction; no federal law issues were involved.) Executive Center claimed that by accepting the $400,000, the defendants (1) violated portions of Wisconsin’s Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act; (2) breached a fiduciary duty they owed to the plaintiff; and (3) benefited from an inequitable preference. Id. at *2.
After pretrial discovery the defendants moved for summary judgment on all of Executive Center’s claims. The court granted summary judgment to the defendants on the fraudulent transfer claim and on the inequitable preference claim, but denied summary judgment on the fiduciary duty claim.
The gist of Executive Center’s fiduciary duty claim was that the defendants breached fiduciary duties they owed to Executive Center, a BRIC creditor, when they accepted BRIC’s payment of $400,000 at a time when BRIC was insolvent. The defendants argued that “common law fiduciary duties do not apply to Wisconsin LLCs because LLCs are purely statutory creatures that have their duties defined entirely by statute.” Id. at *7 (citing Gottsacker v. Monnier, 697 N.W.2d 436, 447 (Wis. 2005)). The defendants also pointed out that Wisconsin’s LLC Act does not expressly state that common law fiduciary duties apply to LLCs, other than referring to the Act’s incorporation of veil-piercing principles. Id.
The District Court distinguished Gottsacker, however, pointing out that its only discussion of the applicability of common law fiduciary duties to LLCs was in one Justice’s concurring opinion. The court then examined precedent from other jurisdictions, finding it persuasive: “In fact, there is growing consensus that common law fiduciary duties should apply to the operations of LLCs.” Id. at *8 (citing seven cases from Indiana, Kentucky, California, Connecticut, and Idaho). The court also looked to the policy supported by fiduciary duty rules. “Fiduciary duties exist to protect people who are affected by the actions of those who control businesses. Therefore, it would not make any sense if the expectation for a business to act fairly were to be different simply due to the business owners’ choice of form – an LLC, in this case.” Id. at *9 (citation omitted). The court concluded that common law fiduciary duties apply to Wisconsin LLCs. Id.
The court next considered whether any duties were owed to Executive Center in particular. (Executive Center was a creditor of BRIC, not a member.) Under Wisconsin case law, the defendants would owe a fiduciary duty to Executive Center if (a) BRIC was insolvent at the time of the $400,000 transfer, and (b) BRIC had ceased to act as a going concern. The court had already found that BRIC was insolvent at the time of the transfer, and defendants had conceded that there was an issue of fact regarding whether BRIC was no longer a going concern at the time of the transfer. The court therefore found that genuine issues of material fact remained, and denied defendants’ summary judgment motion on the fiduciary duty claim, which meant that the issue could go to trial.
This case is a nice example of a court resolving a question left unanswered by the state’s LLC Act. (I have written about this issue before, in connection with the Idaho case cited by the Executive Center opinion, here.) It’s also not a surprising result – it’s difficult to imagine a court finding that fiduciary duties do not in general apply to LLCs.
New York High Court Punts on Fiduciary Duties of LLC Promoters
Last month New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, affirmed a 2010 ruling by the Appellate Division that LLC promoters were fiduciaries of the investors they solicited, prior to the LLC’s formation, to become members. Roni LLC v. Arfa, 2011 WL 6338906 (N.Y. Dec. 20, 2011). The top court’s ruling was a surprisingly short memorandum opinion, given the significance of the issue presented.
The Appellate Division had applied the corporate rule on pre-formation activities to LLCs. “It is well settled that both before and after a corporation comes into existence, its promoter acts as the fiduciary of that corporation and its present and anticipated shareholders…. By extension, the organizer of a limited liability company is a fiduciary of the investors it solicits to become members.” Roni LLC v. Arfa, 74 A.D.3d 442, 444 (N.Y. App. Div. 2010). I wrote about the Appellate Division’s ruling here, and about last month’s oral argument before the Court of Appeals, here.
The Appellate Division’s ruling had also garnered attention from New York lawyer Peter Mahler, here and here, and from the late Professor Larry Ribstein, who passed away recently, here. Professor Ribstein also filed an amicus brief on the case with the Court of Appeals. The major criticisms of the 2010 ruling have been that the rule of the old corporate cases is no longer necessary because of the disclosure requirements of the federal and state securities laws, and that the corporate rule should not be applied to LLCs because their contractual nature distinguishes them from corporations.
The Court of Appeals put off the question, however, whether mere status as a pre-formation LLC promoter is adequate to create a fiduciary relationship. “Based on the foregoing analysis, we need not decide the question of whether the promoter defendants’ status as organizers of the limited liability companies, standing alone, was sufficient to allege a fiduciary relationship.” Roni LLC v. Arfa, 2011 WL 6338906, at *4 n.2.
The court instead began by citing prior case law to the effect that a fiduciary relationship exists “when confidence is reposed on one side and there is resulting superiority and influence on the other,” id. at *2. The court then reviewed the complaint’s allegations that (1) the promoters planned the business venture, organized the LLC, and controlled the invested funds; (2) the promoters were in the best position to disclose material facts to the investors; (3) the promoters represented to the foreign investors that they had particular experience and expertise in the New York real estate market; and (4) the promoters played upon the cultural identities and friendship of the investors. The court found that the complaint’s allegations showed confidence by the investors and resulting superiority and influence by the promoters, and therefore adequately pled a fiduciary relationship. Id. at *3.
The Court of Appeals ignored the Appellate Division’s holding that the complaint’s allegations are inadequate to establish a fiduciary relationship, which suggests that the Court of Appeals went out of its way to affirm without ruling on the “LLC-promoter-status-equals-a-fiduciary” issue. But if so, it’s slightly puzzling that the court also saw no distinction between LLCs and corporations for the issues in this case:
Certainly there are differences between limited liability companies and traditional corporations, but the distinctions are not relevant to the allegations in this case: a potential exists regardless of corporate form for “conscienceless promoters [to] accumulate property at a low price under a well-devised scheme to unload it upon others at a high price.
Id. at *4 n.1.
Although the court’s opinion leaves open the “LLC-promoter-status-equals-fiduciary” issue, I suspect that most plaintiff’s attorneys will conclude that the court left them with enough to work with when pleading pre-formation fiduciary duty claims against LLC promoters. For one thing, the first three of the four factual points in Roni referred to by the court and summarized above are likely to apply to most promoter situations.
