Welcome to this 16th annual edition of Summer Shorts. This year’s edition features brief commentary on a trio of recent decisions by New York courts in business divorce cases, including:
- in the Bodenchak case’s latest round, finding that the
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The Hidden Risks of AI-Generated Due Diligence
If you’ve closed a deal in the past year, there’s a good chance your outside counsel, your counterparty’s advisors or maybe your own team used an AI tool to review part of the data room.
The appeal is obvious. A
The Pinpoint Citation That Wasn’t There: Commercial Division Reaffirms Why the Proposed Pinpoint Citation Rule Can’t Wait
As my colleague, Serene Carino, recently blogged, the Commercial Division Advisory Council has proposed a rule requiring accurate pinpoint citations in all Commercial Division filings, a reform designed to ensure that “[t]he reader should never be left guessing where
Power Players / Power Struggle: First Department Affirms Dismissal of Shareholder Class Action Challenging Energy Company’s Take-Private Merger
Let’s say you are a minority interest holder facing a squeeze-out merger. If someone else controls the process, the price, and the paperwork, how do you know the deal was fair? Can a minority shareholder that also holds a meaningful
Sharper Briefs, Smarter Discovery: Two Proposed Commercial Division Rule Changes
The Commercial Division Advisory Council has released two proposed rule amendments for public comment — one requiring greater transparency in discovery cost-shifting requests, and another mandating pinpoint citations in Commercial Division filings.
Proposal No. 1: Transparency for Discovery Cost-Shifting Requests
“Knowing” and “Intentional” Defalcation Yields Goliath Punitive Damages Award
This week, drawing inspiration from Peter Mahler’s annual Summer Shorts series of articles, we’ll feature a relatively pithy summary of an impressive post-trial decision from one of the finest judges sitting in our state capital, Albany County Commercial Division Justice
Representing the Company, Advising the Founder: The Conflict That Cost Cooley $25 Million
If you are company counsel advising an early-stage startup, the recent judgment in Gregg v. Cooley LLP should give you pause. On July 27, 2026, the Superior Court of New Jersey entered a judgment of over $25 million against Cooley
Brooklyn Cases Test the Procedural Boundaries of Shareholder Oppression
Shareholder oppression is a claim that minority owners make almost instinctively when a closely held business relationship breaks down. That instinct feeds a constant stream of litigants pushing courts to test the doctrine’s boundaries—what counts as oppression, what remedies it
Steal the Show, Face the Consequences: When Stripping a Company’s Assets Becomes a Multimillion-Dollar Fraud
How far can a CEO go in diverting a company’s most valuable assets to entities controlled by his spouse before the courts call it what it is: fraud? Paley v. Curious Holdings, LLC, 2026 NY Slip Op 50829(U) (Sup Ct
Co-Director Removal and the Business Judgment Rule
Last week, Becky Baek wrote a fine piece about LLC manager removal. Her case, Homapour v 3M Props., LLC, (___ AD3d ___, 2026 NY Slip Op 04371 [1st Dept July 9, 2026]), alluded to, without mentioning explicitly, the LLC