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Stefan J. Padfield

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Director of the NCPPR's Free Enterprise Project. Prior experience includes 15+ years as a law professor, two federal judicial clerkships, private practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, LLP, and 6 years enlisted active duty (US Army). Immigrant (naturalized).

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Another new case provides fun with entity issue spotting. Here’s today’s gem from Wade v. Touchdown Realty Group, LLC, 2019 WL 2403193 (D.Mass.), 1 (D.Mass., 2019):

Plaintiffs Gregg and Karin Wade allege that the home they purchased from Defendant Touchdown Realty Group, LLC (“Touchdown”) did not comply with building codes in breach of the purchase agreement and that Touchdown and Defendant Thomas Clayton falsely represented that the home was a three-bedroom house, not a two-bedroom house, and that it was code-compliant. …

Touchdown is a Rhode Island limited liability corporation, with its principal place of business at 12 E. Cottage Street, Smithfield, Rhode Island. Touchdown is in the business of buying and renovating residential real estate for resale. Clayton’s wife, Kelly Clayton, is Touchdown’s sales manager and sole shareholder. The company address is also the Claytons’ home address in Rhode Island.

At a quick glance, we see that an LLC has been called a “corporation.”  And we have an LLC with a “sole shareholder,” as opposed to a member. 

In addition, the court does a jurisdictional analysis of the LLC without actually specifically assessing the residency of the LLC member, which is how LLC jurisdiction is determined. In fairness, the …

The AALS Section on Agency, Partnership, LLCs, and Unincorporated Entities is pleased to announce a Call for Papers from which up to three presenters will be selected for the section’s program to be held during the AALS 2020 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The program will explore decisions and strategies for choice of business form. As unincorporated business forms have matured and those who use them have learned their advantages and disadvantages, key decisions about choice of form have changed in important and interesting ways. In addition, accelerating advances in technology promise to play surprising roles in the formation and operation of unincorporated firms. 

Submission Information: 

Please submit an abstract or draft of an unpublished paper to Kelli Alces Williams at kalces@law.fsu.edu before August 5, 2019.  Please remove the author’s name and identifying information from the submission. Please include the author’s name and contact information in the submission email. 

Papers will be selected after review by members of the Executive Committee of the Section. Authors of selected papers will be notified by August 30, 2019. The Call for Paper presenters will be responsible for paying their registration fee, hotel, and travel expenses. 

Any inquiries about the Call for Papers should be submitted…

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I’ll start with the exciting news that my Business Organizations students were 48 for 48 in recognizing that LLCs are not corporations.  In fact, a number of my students specifically referred to “LLCs (NOT corporations) …” in their exams. It’s nice to be heard.  I believe that’s at least three years in a row without such a mistake, and maybe longer. I have evidence, at least on this issue, repetition is effective.  

As for this summer, it is going to be an interesting one.  I have now finished grading my last classes as a part of West Virginia Univerity College of Law. As some readers may know, I have accepted the opportunity to join Creighton University School of Law as the next dean.  (For those wondering, my wife Kendra will be joining the Creighton Law faculty, as well, where, as was true at WVU, she will teach family law as a full professor.) After Kendra’s run for Congress ended, she told me it was “my turn,” and that I should pursue my goals.  I don’t think either of us expected such a big change so quickly.  

Long before all of this became a reality, and after the campaign, we…

It has been kind of a unique end of the semester, and I am working feverously to get through my Business Organizations exams. I’m getting there.  So far, I have had zero exams reference a “limited liability corporation.”  If this holds, it will be at least three years in a row.  

I have had a couple of folks refer to LLC veil piercing as piercing the “corporate” veil (another no-no), and I did have some other “corporate” references to LLCs (e.g., “an LLC’s corporate formalities”), so we’re not all the way there. But so far, I am seeing improvement, and I appreciate the effort.  

Here’s hoping for 48 of 48 describing the LLC (as an entity) correctly.  I hope the rest of my colleagues are holding up well here in the home stretch. Good luck to all. 

The following comes to us from Bernard Sharfman:

I have slightly revised a key paragraph from the Introduction of my new article, Enhancing the Value of Shareholder Voting Recommendations. This paragraph takes the approach that shareholder voting is really more about authority than accountability. Using this approach has significant implications for the use of board voting recommendations. I would appreciate any comments that you may have on the following:

[S]hareholder voting in a public company cannot be looked at as simply another tool of accountability, i.e., a device to minimize agency costs or enhance efficiency, such as when shareholders file a direct or derivative lawsuit, initiate a proxy contest, attempt a hostile takeover, or take significant positions in the company and then advocate for change (hedge fund activism, here and here). When shareholders vote they are also participating, alongside the board, in corporate decision making. That is, they are temporarily transformed into a locus of corporate authority that rivals the authority of the board. As co-decision makers it is critical that shareholders and those with delegated voting authority, such as mutual fund advisers, have at their disposal informed and sufficiently precise voting recommendations, no matter what the…

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