A Litigator's Guide to Avoiding Lawsuits Between Owners of Closely-Held Companies
As members of Pryor Cashman’s Litigation Group, Eric Fishman and Matthew Barkan see their share of disputes among business owners. These disagreements tend to be entrenched and emotional and are often difficult to watch.
Drawing on their experience representing parties in these litigations, Fishman and Barkan have laid out tactics that every company owner can take to avoid messy — and costly — disputes with their co-owners.
Writing for Bloomberg Law, the two explained, “if you own a closely-held company — perhaps as a shareholder of a start-up corporation, or a member of a limited liability company or a partner in a limited partnership — you hope never to require our services, because that would mean you are in a dispute, and likely a dispute with the other owners of your company. These internal disputes are among the most difficult, in large part because they are personal. The good news is that with proper planning, a great majority of these disputes need not progress to the point of litigation.”
