LLCs

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Readers of this blog know how much I hate courts that call LLCs “corporations.” (If you’re a new reader, welcome. And now you know, too.)  I am also one who likes to remind people that entity choices come with both rights and obligations, as do choices about whether to have an entity at all. Recent events in Illinois touch on both of these issues. 

A recent news story from Chicago’s NBC affiliate laments a recent court decision in Illinois that requires entities to have counsel if they are to make an appeal, even in the administrative process related to a parking ticket.  The story can be found here.  The short story is this: if one registers a vehicle in the name of a corporation, then the corporation must be represented by counsel to contest the ticket.  The reason for this determination comes from a non-parking related decision from 2014. 

In that decision, Stone Street Partners LLC v. City of Chicago Department of Administrative Hearings, the court determined that “the City’s administrative hearings, like judicial proceedings, involve the admission of evidence and examination and cross-examination of sworn witnesses–all of which clearly constitute the practice of law.” 12 N.E.3d…

The ABA has recommend amendment of 28 U.S.C. § 1332 through Resolution 103B, which 

urges Congress to amend 28 U.S.C. § 1332, to provide that any unincorporated business entity shall, for diversity jurisdiction purposes, be deemed a citizen of its state of organization and the state where the entity maintains its principal places of business.

I’m on record as saying a legislative fix is how this should happen because I don’t think courts should read “incorporated” in the act to include any entities other than corporations.  I still believe that.  However, I have come up with an argument that supports the idea in a way I had not thought of.  I still disagree with the idea of a court adding entities other than corporations to 1332 absent legislative action, so I disagree with what follows, but I thought of an interesting argument that I almost find compelling , so I am putting it out there anyway.  

In Hobby Lobby decision, Justice Alito stated:

No known understanding of the term “person” includes some but not all corporations. The term “person” sometimes encompasses artificial persons (as the Dictionary Act instructs), and it sometimes is limited to natural persons. But no conceivable

…

The 2015 American Bar Association LLC Institute will be held November 12-13 in Arlington, Virginia.  I’m speaking this year (on LLC dissolution with Carter Bishop and Doug Moll and on a panel hashing out issues at the intersection of LLC [operating] agreements and contract law), and have attended/spoken at several earlier Institutes.  The complete program is available on Tom Rutledge’s blog.

If you would like to attend this year and need information on how to get registered, you can reach out to Tom (Thomas.rutledge@skofirm.com) and he will get you whatever you need.  Tom is very user-friendly and an amazing colleague, if you haven’t yet met him.  He is particularly adept (among his many talents) at bringing the law academy and the law practice community together in productive ways.  The LLC Institute is a great example.

Also, if you are working on issues relating to LLC law or are considering wading into those waters, be thinking about program ideas for future Institutes.  Planning for the 2016 LLC Institute already is underway.  Many of the sessions at the Institute focus or are based on the scholarship of law academics on LLCs and other unincorporated business associations.  For example, at…

As I earlier noted, I participated in a continuing legal education program at The University of Tennessee College of Law last Friday on the basics of crowdfunding.  My partners in crime for the last hour of the event were two folks from Chattanooga, Tennessee (yes, home of the famous choo choo) who have been involved in crowdfunding efforts for local businesses.  One used crowdfunding to finance a change in the location of a business; the other used crowdfunding to gauge interest in his business concept and raise seed capital.  They described their businesses and financing efforts in the second segment of the program (after a foundational hour on crowdfunding from me). 

The business location change was for The Camp House, a coffeehouse owned and operated as part of The Mission Chattanooga, a local church.  Private events, including music performances, also take place at the venue.  The Camp House raised over $32,000 through a crowdfunding campaign on Causeway.  Matt Busby, Director of The Camp House, educated us on donation crowdfunding through a non-profit platform.

The new business concept and capital raise was for Treetop Hideaways (a/k/a, The Treehouse Project), a business that designed, built, and rents time…

This post is related to another great post from Tom Rutledge at the Kentucky Business Entity Law Blog, Diversity Jurisdiction and Jurisdictional Discovery: The Third Circuit Holds That “Hiding The Ball” Will Not Work. Tom’s post is about Lincoln Benefit Life Company v. AEI Life, LLC, No. 14-2660, 2015 WL 5131423, ___ F.2d__ (3rd Cir. Sept. 2, 2015), which is available here. 

Lincoln Benefit allows a plaintiff, after a reasonable inquiry into the resources available (like court records and public documents), to allege complete diversity in good faith, if there is no reason to believe any LLC members share the same state of citizenship.  Thus, the diversity claim can be made on “information and belief.”  Tom explains that

While it may do nothing to address the fact that diversity jurisdiction may be unavailable consequent to de minimis indirect ownership  . . .  it does limit the ability of a defendant to “hide the ball” as to its citizenship while objecting that the other side has not adequately pled citizenship and therefore diversity. 

This concern arises out of the fact that LLCs, as unincorporated associations, are treated like partnerships for purposes of federal diversity jurisdiction, meaning that an…

Limited liability companies (LLCs) are often viewed as some sort of a modified corporation.  This is wrong, as LLCs are unique entities (as are, for example, limited partnerships), but that has not stopped lawyers and courts, including this nation’s highest court, from conflating LLCs and corporations.  

About four and a half years ago, in a short Harvard Business Law Review Online article, I focused on this oddity, noting that many courts

seem to view LLCs as close cousins to corporations, and many even appear to view LLCs as subset or specialized types of corporations. A May 2011 search of Westlaw’s “ALLCASES” database provides 2,773 documents with the phrase “limited liability corporation,” yet most (if not all) such cases were actually referring to LLCs—limited liability companies. As such, it is not surprising that courts have often failed to treat LLCs as alternative entities unto themselves. It may be that some courts didn’t even appreciate that fact. (footnotes omitted).

I have been writing about this subject again recently, so I decided to revisit the question of just how many courts call LLCs “limited liability corporations” instead of “limited liability companies.”  I returned to Westlaw, though this time…

I know I am Johnny One Note on this, but while researching another project, I decided to check again if litigators (and courts) are still referring to veil piercing of LLCs as “corporate veil piercing.” As I have noted before, for LLCs, it should be “piercing the LLC veil” or, more generally, “piercing the limited liability veil.”  Or “PLLV,” as I like to call it. (Not as catchy is “PCV,” but it is far more universally accurate.)

Sure enough, last week, a New York court refused to denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s third amended complaint, deciding that “Plaintiff has adequately pled facts sufficient to defeat the Individual Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s claim for piercing the corporate veil.” Capital Inv. Funding, LLC v. Lancaster Grp. LLC, No. CIV.A. 8-4714 JLL, 2015 WL 4915464, at *7 (D.N.J. Aug. 18, 2015).  But Plaintiff is seeking to piercing the veil of an LLC.  As such, I think they need a fourth amended complaint.  

Also last week, in an unpublished opinion, a Minnesota court upheld a decision to pierce the limited liability veil of Alpha Law Firm, LLC.  The court found the court below “did not abuse its discretion…

Over at the Kentucky Business Entity law blog, Thomas Rutledge discusses a recent decision from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, affirming a Bankruptcy Court decision that finding that when a member of an LLC with voting control personally files bankruptcy, that right to control the LLC became a vested in the trustee because the right was part of the bankruptcy estate. The case is In re Lester L. Lee, No. 4-15-cv-00009-RLY-WGH, Adv. Proc. No. 14-59011 (S.D. Ind. August 10, 2015) (PDF here).

A key issue was that the bankruptcy filer (Lester Lee) had 51% of the vote, but no shares. The court then explains:

7.  . . . [t]he Operating Agreement states . . .

(D) Each member shall have the voting power and a share of the Principal and income and profits and losses of the company as follows:

Member’s Name (Share) (Votes)

Debra Jo Brown (20%)  (10)

Brenda R. Lee (40%) (20)

Larry L. Lee (20%) (10)

Melinda Gabbard (20%) (10)

Lester L. Lee (0%) (51)

. . . .

8. . . . Trustee’s counsel became aware of the Debtor’s 51% voting rights as a member, and that pursuant to

…

This weekend I will be in Panama filling in at the last minute for the corporate law session for an executive LLM progam. My students are practicing lawyers from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Paraguay and have a variety of legal backgrounds. My challenge is to fit key corporate topics (other than corporate governance, compliance, M & A, finance, and accounting) into twelve hours over two days for people with different knowledge levels and experiences. The other faculty members hail from law schools here and abroad as well as BigLaw partners from the United States and other countries.

Prior to joining academia I spent several weeks a year training/teaching my internal clients about legal and compliance matters for my corporation. This required an understanding of US and host country concepts. I have also taught in executive MBA programs and I really enjoyed the rich discussion that comes from students with real-world practical experience. I know that I will have that experience again this weekend even though I will probably come back too brain dead to be coherent for my civil procedure and business associations classes on Tuesday.

I have put together a draft list of topics with the help…

Last week I attended a panel discussion with angel investors and venture capitalists hosted by Refresh Miami. Almost two hundred entrepreneurs and tech professionals attended the summer startup series to learn the inside scoop on fundraising from panelists Ed Boland, Principal Scout Ventures; Stony Baptiste, Co-Founder & Principal, Urban.Us, Venture Fund; Brad Liff, Founder & CEO, Fitting Room Social, Private Equity Expert; and (the smartest person under 30 I have ever met) Herwig Konings, Co-Founder & CEO of Accredify, Crowd Funding Expert. Because I was typing so fast on my iPhone, I didn’t have time to attribute my notes to the speakers. Therefore, in no particular order, here are the nuggets I managed to glean from the panel.

1) In the seed stage, it’s more than an idea but less than a business. If it’s before true market validation you are in the seed round. At the early stage, there has been some form of validation, but the business is not yet sustainable. Everything else beyond that is the growth stage.

2) The friend and family round is typically the first $50-75,000. Angels come in the early stage and typically invest up to $500,000.

3)…