Industry: Real Estate

Suppose a property owner hires a general contractor for a time-sensitive project.  The general contractor in turn hires a subcontractor.  After the project hits some snags and delays, the property owner tries to move things along by assuring the subcontractor that it will get paid for certain additional tasks that the owner requests.  However, the subcontractor never enters into a formal written agreement covering the additional work.  If the subcontractor is not fully paid for the work, can it successfully sue the property owner, the general contractor, or both for contractual or quasi-contractual damages?  A recent decision by Justice Andrea Masley of the Commercial Division in Corporate Electrical Technologies, Inc. v. Structure Tone, Inc., suggests that in certain circumstances, the answer is yes: the subcontractor can recover from the property owner or the general contractor for the additional work, even absent a written contract covering that work, based on the parties’ course of conduct.

In actions brought by minority members to dissolve an LLC, a key inquiry is whether the LLC’s managers are unable or unwilling to permit or promote the LLC’s “stated purpose.”  In many cases, an LLC’s operating agreement provides that the LLC’s “stated purpose” is “any lawful business.”  As a result, one might think that the central question in many judicial dissolution cases would end up being whether the LLC is engaged in lawful business.  Not necessarily.  Recently, in Mace v. Tunick,[1] the Second Department suggested that an “any lawful business” purposes clause is insufficient to conclusively refute an allegation that an LLC was formed for a particular purpose.  Mace could therefore be read to eliminate some of the protections against litigation that would be provided for by an “any lawful business” clause.

In two recent decisions, Justices Charles E. Ramos and Saliann Scarpulla of the New York Commercial Division ruled that term sheets were not binding agreements. Keitel v. E*Trade Fin. Corp., No. 652220/2015, 2017 BL 131532 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Apr. 17, 2017); JTS Trading Ltd. v. Trinity White City Ventures Ltd., No. 651936/2015, 2017 BL 131820 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Apr. 17, 2017). These cases serve as reminders to contracting parties to use unequivocal terms to reflect the creation of binding obligations when memorializing their agreements.

On January 10, 2016, the New York Court of Appeals decided to hear a case that has significant consequence in the field of partnership dissolution.  The case, Congel v. Malfitano, concerns the allegedly wrongful dissolution of a shopping mall partnership under Partnership Law § 69.  In 2016, Justice Thomas A. Dickerson, writing for a unanimous Second Department panel, held that a former partner’s unilateral notice of dissolution was wrongful because under Partnership Law § 69(2)(1)(b) the partnership was not “at-will” given that the written agreement contained a “definite term.”  The Second Department also ruled that it is appropriate to apply minority and goodwill discounts in determining the value of a defendant’s interest in a partnership.  Finally, the Second Department concluded that an award of attorney’s fees was proper because the expenditures are only incurred because of the former partner’s wrongful conduct.