LLCs

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Sometimes, LLC cases are a mess. It is often hard to tell whether the court is misstating something, whether the LLCs (and their counsel) are just sloppy, or both.  My money, most of the time is on “both.” 

Consider this recent Louisiana opinion (my comments inserted): 

The defendant, Riverside Drive Partners, LLC (“Riverside”) appeals the district court judgment denying its motion for a new trial related to its order of January 8, 2018, dismissing all pending claims against three parties in this multiparty litigation: (1) CCNO McDonough 16, LLC (“CCNO”); (2) R4 MCNO Acquisition LLC (“R4”); and (3) Joseph A. Stebbins, II. After review of the record in light of the applicable law and arguments of the parties, the district court judgment is affirmed. . . .

This litigation arises out of a dispute among partners in a real estate development related to the conversion of an existing historic building into an affordable housing complex. Pursuant to the Operating Agreement signed on September 30, 2013, McDonough 16, LLC, was formed to acquire, rehabilitate, and ultimately lease and operate a multi-family apartment project consisting of the historic building and a new construction building. In turn, McDonough 16, LLC had two members,

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Tom Rutledge at Kentucky Business Entity Law Blog writes: 

As a general proposition, LLC operating agreements may change the default rules provided for in the LLC Act.  A recent decision from Pennsylvania found that a general provision as to decision making by majority vote did not alter the statutory default of unanimous approval to amend the operating agreement.  Saltzer v. Rolka, No. 702 MDA 2017, 2018 WL 5603050 (Pa. Super. Ct. Oct. 30, 2018).
 
     . . . .
     
Under the Pennsylvania LLC Act, the default rule for amendment of the operating agreement is unanimous approval of the members.  15 Pa.C.S.A § 8942(b).  That rule may be altered in a written operating agreement. Id. The LLC’s operating agreement provided that it could be amended by the members at a regular or special meeting, but in that section did not address the threshold for the required vote.  Another section of the agreement provided “Except as otherwise provided in the [LLCA], or this Agreement, whenever any action is to be taken by vote of the members, it shall be authorized upon receiving the affirmative vote of a majority of the votes cast by all Members entitle

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Back in 2011, I wrote, in a Harvard Business Law Review Online article, that the default rule in analyzing all LLC questions should be one taken from CML V, LLC v. Bax, 6 A.3d 238 (Del. Ch. Nov. 3, 2010): “[T]here is nothing absurd about different legal principles applying to corporations and LLCs.” I still believe that. I further argued:

Where legislatures have decided that distinctly corporate concepts should apply to LLCs—such as allowing piercing the veil or derivative lawsuits—those wishes (obviously) should be honored by the courts. And where state LLC laws are silent, the court should carefully consider the legislative context and history, as well as the policy implications of the possible answers to the questions presented. Courts should put forth cogent reasons for their decisions, rather than blindly applying corporate law principles in what are seemingly analogous situations between LLCs and corporations. [footnotes omitted]

In 2014, I discussed a case West Virginia case in a post here at Business Law Prof Blog, More LLC Veil Piercing Forced into State Statutes. In that post, I was critical of a West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals decision reading veil piercing into the state’s LLC statute.  My main…

I am wading back into a jurisdiction case because when it to LLCs (limited liability companies), I need to. A new case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit showed up on Westlaw.  Here’s how the analysis section begins:

Jurisdiction in this case is found under the diversity statute 28 U.S.C. § 1332. John Kendle is a citizen of Ohio; defendant WHIG Enterprises, LLC is a Florida corporation with its principal place of business in Mississippi; defendant Rx Pro Mississippi is a Mississippi corporation with its principal place of business in Mississippi; defendant Mitchell Chad Barrett is a citizen of Mississippi; defendant Jason Rutland is a citizen of Mississippi. R. 114 (Second Am. Compl. at ¶¶ 3, 5) (Page ID #981–82). Kendle is seeking damages in excess of $75,000. Id. at ¶¶ 50, 54, 58, 64, 71 (Page ID #992–95). The district court issued an order under Rule 54(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that granted final judgment in favor of Mitchell Chad Barrett, and so appellate jurisdiction is proper. R. 170 (Rule 54(b) Order) (Page ID #3021).

Kendle v. Whig Enterprises, LLC, No. 18-3574, 2019 WL 148420, at *3 (6th…

Not for my purposes, anyway. Back in 2016, I made the argument that the IRS should “stop using state-law designations”: 

My proposal is not abolishing corporate tax – that’s a much longer post and one I am not sure I’d agree with.  Instead, the proposal is to have entities choose from options that are linked the Internal Revenue Code, and not to a particular entity. Thus, we would have (1) entity taxation, called C Tax, where an entity chooses to pay tax at the entity level, which would be typical C Corp taxation; (2) pass-through taxation, called K Tax, which is what we usually think of as partnership tax; and (3) we get rid of S corps, which can now be LLCs, anyway, which would allow an entity to choose S Tax. 

This post deals with the tax code, which means I am in over my head, and because this is tax related, it means the solution is a lot more complicated than this proposal.  But now that the code provisions are not really linked to the state law entity, I think we should try refer to state entities as state entities, and federal tax status with

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Sometimes I think courts are just trolling me (and the rest of us who care about basic entity concepts). The following quotes (and my commentary) are related to the newly issued case, Estes v. Hayden, No. 2017-CA-001882-MR, 2018 WL 6600225, at *1 (Ky. Ct. App. Dec. 14, 2018): 

“Estes and Hayden were business partners in several limited liability corporations, one of which was Success Management Team, LLC (hereinafter “Success”).” Maybe they had some corporations and LLCs, but the case only references were to LLCs (limited liability companies).

But wait, it gets worse:  “Hayden was a minority shareholder in, and the parties had no operating agreement regarding, Success.”  Recall that Success is an LLC. There should not be shareholders in an LLC. Members owning membership interests, yes. Shareholders, no. 

Apparently, Success was anything but, with Hayden and Estes being sued multiple times related to residential home construction where fraudulent conduct was alleged. Hayden sued Estes to dissolve and wind down all the parties’ business entities claiming a pattern of fraudulent conduct by Estes. Ultimately, the two entered a settlement agreement related to (among other things) back taxes, including an escrow account, which was (naturally) insufficient to cover the tax liability.  This…

I just don’t get the fascination that courts have with calling LLCs (limited liability companies) limited liability corporations. Yes, at this point, I can no longer claim to be surprised, but I can remain appalled/disappointed/frustrated/etc. Today I happened upon a U.S. District Court case from Florida that made just such an error.  This one bugs me, in part, because the court’s reference immediately precedes a quotation of the related LLC statute, which repeatedly refers to the “limited liability company.”  It’s right there! 
 
That said, the court assesses the situation appropriately, and (I think) gets the law and outcome right.  The court explains: 
In this case, Commerce and Industry served the summons on Southern Construction by serving the wife of the manager of Southern Construction. Doc. No. 10. Because Southern Construction is a limited liability corporation, service is proper under Fla. Stat. § 48.062 . . . .
*2 (1) Process against a limited liability company, domestic or foreign, may be served on the registered agent designated by the limited liability company under chapter 605. A person attempting to serve process pursuant to this subsection may serve the process on any employee of the registered agent during the

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Last week I posted Can LLC Members Be Employees? It Depends (Because of Course It Does), where I concluded that “as far as I am concerned, LLC members can also be LLCs employees, even though the general answer is that they are not. ” I thought I would follow up today with an example of an LLC member who is also an employee.  

I am not teaching Business Associations until next semester, but it galls me a little that I did not note this case last week, as it is a case that I teach as part of the section on fiduciary duties in Delaware.  

The case is Fisk Ventures, LLC v. Segal and the relevant facts excerpted from the case are as follows: 
Genitrix, LLC, is a Delaware limited liability company formed to develop and market biomedical technology. Dr. Segal founded the Company in 1996 following his postdoctoral fellowship at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Originally formed as a Maryland limited liability company, Genitrix was moved in 1997 to Delaware at the behest of Dr. H. Fisk Johnson, who invested heavily. 
Equity in Genitrix is divided into three classes of membership. In exchange for

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Tom Rutledge posts the following over at the Kentucky Business Entity Law Blog:

LLC Members Are Not the LLC’s Employees

There is now pending before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals of a suit that may turn on whether the relevant question, namely whether an LLC member is an employee of the LLC, has already been determined by a state court. In that underlying judgment, the Circuit Court of Cole County, Missouri, issued a judgment dated October 9 18, 2017 in the case Joseph S. Vaughn Kaenel v. Warren, Case No.: 15 AC-CC 00472. That judgment provided in part:

As an equity partner of Armstrong Teasdale, LLP, [Kaenel] is not a covered employee protected by the Missouri Human Rights Act.

I am curious as to which case this is that is pending.  Tom knows his stuff and knows (and respects) the differences between entities, so I assume there is more to than appears here.  

For example, the fact that a state court determined that an LLP equity partner is not an employee does not inherently answer the question of whether an LLC member is an employee. It could, but it does not have to do so.  

In addition…

Back in May, I noted my dislike of the LLC diversity jurisdiction rule, which determines an LLC’s citizenship “by the citizenship of each of its members” I noted, 

I still hate this rule for diversity jurisdiction of LLCs.  I know I am not the first to have issues with this rule. 

I get the idea that diversity jurisdiction was extended to LLCs in the same way that it was for partnerships, but in today’s world, it’s dumb. Under traditional general partnership law, partners were all fully liable for the partnership, so it makes sense to have all partners be used to determine diversity jurisdiction.  But where any partner has limited liabilty, like members do for LLCs, it seems to me the entity should be the only consideration in determing citizenship for jurisdiction purposes. It works for corporations, even where a shareholder is also a manger (or CEO), so why not have the same for LLCs.  If there are individuals whose control of the entity is an issue, treat and LLC just like a corporation. Name individuals, too, if you think there is direct liability, just as you would with a corporation. For a corporation, if there is a shareholder, director, or

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