December 2, 2019 | Court Rulings, Valuations
Acosta v. Wilmington Trust In this ESOP litigation, both parties tried to exclude the opposing side’s valuation expert testimony under Rule 702 and Daubert. The court noted that, at this stage in the proceedings, its focus was on whether the experts applied reliable principles and methods, not on the experts’ conclusions. This case serves as Continue Reading »
November 18, 2019 | Court Rulings, Divorce Litigation, Valuations
Burchfield v. Burchfield Among a host of issues, this Virginia divorce case, which included a prominent Washington, D.C., lawyer and his estranged wife, raised an important valuation question related to the husband’s partnership interest in the firm: Whether undistributed earnings were includible in the marital property, as the wife’s expert claimed, or whether they were Continue Reading »
November 4, 2019 | Court Rulings, Valuations
Schewe v. Schewe Farms In a family dispute featuring a farm business that owned real estate, the parties’ experts disagreed on an issue that was pivotal to how they would value the sellers’ distributional interest. The trial court resolved the valuation dispute by adopting one expert’s proposed methodology while making significant adjustments to that expert’s Continue Reading »
October 21, 2019 | Court Rulings
Sabre GLBL, Inc. v. Shan This damages case, which centered on an employee’s breach of fiduciary duties and other misconduct toward her former employer, and which went to arbitration, includes an informative discussion of the difference between head start damages and saved development costs. Both the federal district court and 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals Continue Reading »
October 7, 2019 | Court Rulings, Divorce Litigation
Oudheusden v. Oudheusden In a noteworthy decision, a Connecticut appellate court recently found the trial court double dipped when it divided the marital assets and calculated spousal support. Although attorneys from both sides had alerted the trial court to the risk of double dipping, the court awarded the non-owner spouse half of the value of Continue Reading »
September 9, 2019 | Court Rulings, Valuations
Verition Partners Master Fund Ltd. v. Aruba Networks, Inc. In a sharp rebuke, the Delaware Supreme Court overturned the Court of Chancery’s controversial decision in the Aruba Networks statutory appraisal case to use the unaffected market price as the sole indicator of fair value. The Court of Chancery obtained the market price by averaging the Continue Reading »
August 26, 2019 | Court Rulings, Valuations
Brundle v. Wilmington Trust N.A. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals just affirmed the district court’s ruling against the trustee in the intensely contested Brundle v. Wilmington Trust ESOP case, including the district court’s valuation and damages findings. The district court concluded that the ESOP trustee had violated its fiduciary duty by causing the plan Continue Reading »
August 12, 2019 | Court Rulings, Divorce Litigation
Zausch v. Schnakenburg In a divorce case, the Indiana Court of Appeals reviewed a trial court’s post-judgment decision to modify the husband’s child support obligation upwards. The crux of the case was how to calculate the father’s income where he held minority interests in several pass-through entities (PTEs), some, but not all, of which made Continue Reading »
July 29, 2019 | Court Rulings, Valuations
Lund v. Lund A protracted Minnesota buyout dispute involving the heirs to a local grocery store empire may have reached the end. The state appeals court affirmed most of the district court’s rulings, including the buyout order and fair value determination. The valuation trial featured two veteran appraisers and a judge well versed in appraisal Continue Reading »
July 15, 2019 | Court Rulings, Divorce Litigation, Valuations
Hultz v. Kuhn A Maryland divorce case illustrates the difficulties an appraiser charged with valuing a small company in the divorce context may face and how he or she may prevail in court. The wife was the sole shareholder in a tree services business. The issue at divorce was the size of the monetary award Continue Reading »