I’ve never thought very hard about the remedy of specific performance. That means ordering a party to a contract to perform its contractual obligations.
But the ability of the Court to order specific performance was front and center in the Business Court’s decision Wednesday in Hilco Transport, Inc. v. Atkins, 2015 NCBC 44.
[Ed. note: The following article was written by Mack Sperling before his unplanned leave. Although releasing it today is less timely than is Mack’s custom, the issues involved in the case are still of interest to businesses and business lawyers. Any errors or shortcomings in the article are attributable to your substitute bloggers.]
On February 16, in Lynn v. Lynn, the Court of Appeals interpreted provisions of a Shareholders Agreement requiring the corporation to repurchase a shareholder’s "restricted shares" upon his death, with the purchase to be funded by the proceeds of a life insurance policy on the shareholder. 
The trial court had found the Agreement to be ambiguous, and had considered a variety of extrinsic evidence in determining the ownership of the shares in question. The Court of Appeals found no ambiguity, ruled that it had been error to consider the extrinsic evidence, but it nevertheless reached the same result as to ownership.
Background
A father (James) and his two sons (Greg and Kenneth) formed a corporation, James Lynn & Sons, Inc. Eventually, the father owned 51% and the sons each owned 24.5% of the company’s stock.
In 1993, the shareholders and their wives entered into a shareholders’ agreement requiring that upon death, each shareholder would sell his "restricted" shares back to the corporation for an amount equivalent to the face amount of a life insurance policy on his life, with the face amount to be adjusted annually. The corporation was to own the policies.
The sons kept life insurance in place, paid for by the company, which increased over time from $75,000 to $375,000. The corporation paid the premiums, though the brothers had the policies issued in their names as opposed to them being owned by the corporation. They named their wives as beneficiaries of the policies. The father didn’t maintain insurance, due to expense, but upon his death in 1997 his executor sold his shares to the sons in a transaction referencing the Shareholders Agreement.
Later, the sons adjusted their ownership interests with Kenneth becoming the 55% majority owner and Greg holding a 45% interest.
Then it got interesting. Greg and his wife got divorced, and were involved in heated litigation over the equitable distribution of their property. Greg’s wife sued Kenneth, as majority shareholder, to establish that the shares of the company were subject to equitable distribution.
Kenneth then died unexpectedly. His shares went to his estate. The insurance proceeds went to his wife. Greg’s ex-wife said that 100% of the shares were now subject to her equitable distribution claim. Greg pretty much agreed with his ex-wife, and said that upon the payment of the life insurance proceeds to Kenneth’s wife, he held 100% of the shares.
Kenneth’s widow had a different point of view. She said that the Shareholders Agreement only applied to "restricted shares," and that the shares held by her late husband did not fit that definition. She also said that the corporation hadn’t complied with the life insurance provision given that it did not own the policies. She said she was entitled to both the insurance proceeds and the shares.
Plaintiff was entitled to specific performance of a Shareholders’ Agreement requiring the Defendant, a terminated employee, to tender his shares back to the Plaintiff. The repurchase was ordered even though the Defendant claimed that his termination was wrongful.
The Court granted a Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings, and held:
Specific performance is appropriate when
The Court found a shareholders agreement between the parties to be poorly drafted and ambiguous, determined that it would need to consider extrinsic evidence in order the properly interpret the agreement, and denied the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment.
Defendant, a terminated employee, owned one third of the outstanding stock of Classic Coffee Concepts. The issue was the price to be paid for the stock, which the corporation was obligated to repurchase under a Stockholders Agreement. The Agreement said that the price would be determined by looking to the fair market value of the
Defendant, who was a director, shareholder and former employee of the corporate plaintiff, moved to disqualify the corporate plaintiff’s counsel. He argued that he reasonably believed that the law firm had represented him with regard to the agreements at issue and a guaranty agreement. He also argued that disqualification was appropriate because the corporation’s lawyers
Plaintiff sought to enforce the stock repurchase provisions of a shareholders agreement with two former employees, the defendants. The Court found, however, that the price to be paid ($5 for stock with a book value of more than $36,000), and the circumstances under which the defendants had signed the agreement, rendered the transaction unconscionable. The
The Court enforced mandatory buy-sell provisions in a shareholders agreement, noting the importance of such provisions to closely held businesses, and found that adjusted book value had been properly determined. It further found that the price to be paid was not unconscionable, after discussing both procedural and substantive unconscionability. Although the fair market value of
An agreement requiring a shareholder in a closely held corporation to sell his shares back to the corporation upon termination of his employment is valid and enforceable, as a closely held corporation is entitled to determine who will participate in its business. Book value is a typical and accepted means of determining a purchase price.
Classic Coffee Concepts v. Anderson, 2008 NCBC 1 (N.C. Super. Ct. January 31, 2008)(Diaz)
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Defendant, a terminated employee, owned one third of the outstanding stock of Classic Coffee Concepts. The issue in this case was the price to be paid for the stock, which the corporation was obligated to repurchase under a Stockholders Agreement. The Agreement said that the price would be determined by looking to the fair market value of the stock as determined by an independent appraisal of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan. But no ESOP had ever been established.
A variety of conflicting appraisals were presented to the Court. Defendant would have been entitled to a multi-million recovery under two of them. The first, prepared pre-litigation to address an accounting issue involving goodwill, set the company’s "fair value" at $12,500,000. A "fair value" appraisal ignores discounts in value that are typical for closely held corporations, like those for lack of marketability and lack of control. Defendant’s shares would have been worth $4 million if this appraisal applied. A second appraisal factored in the discounts applicable to closely held corporations, and concluded that the corporation had a value of $8,390,000. If this appraisal had controlled, defendant’s shares would have been worth more than $2.7 million.
The company obtained a hypothetical appraisal for purposes of the litigation which valued the company as if the ESOP required by the Agreement was in place. The value placed on defendant’s shares under this approach was markedly lower, only $120,000. Another appraisal assuming the existence of the ESOP valued defendant’s shares at $192,000, and the last of the many appraisals before the Court valued them at zero.
After analyzing this thicket of conflicting appraisals, the Court held that it would Continue Reading Valuation Formula In Coffee Company’s Stockholders Agreement Enforced