Sherwood Park Business Center, LLC v. Taggart

323 P.3d 551, 261 Or. App. 609
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedMarch 19, 2014
DocketC08554CV; A148908, A148927
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 323 P.3d 551 (Sherwood Park Business Center, LLC v. Taggart) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Sherwood Park Business Center, LLC v. Taggart, 323 P.3d 551, 261 Or. App. 609 (Or. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

HADLOCK, J.

This case arises out of a series of transactions in which a member of Sherwood Park Business Center, LLC (SPBC), Brad Taggart, attempted to transfer his interest in that company to BT of Sherwood, LLC (BT). Taggart later transferred interests in BT to attorney John Berman.1 As a result, by the end of July 2008, BT was wholly owned by Berman; BT, in turn, purported to own a 25 percent interest in SPBC. Eventually, SPBC brought this action requesting, among other things, that the court expel Taggart from SPBC, declare invalid Taggart’s attempted transfer of his interest in SPBC to BT, declare that BT had no interest in SPBC, and unwind the transactions between Taggart and BT. BT brought counterclaims against SPBC as well as claims against two of its members — Terry Emmert and Keith Jehnke.2 As relevant here, BT asserted that Emmert and Jehnke owed it a fiduciary obligation and had breached that obligation. SPBC, Emmert, and Jehnke then responded with additional claims of their own.3 After a bench trial, the court made findings of fact and conclusions of law and, ultimately, entered a general judgment declaring that Taggart’s attempted transfer of his interest in SPBC to BT was null and void, expelling Taggart from SPBC effective January 1, 2008, permitting Emmert and Jehnke to purchase Taggart’s 25 percent interest in SPBC, and declaring that defendants were not entitled to distributions or allocations of profits or losses of SPBC since 2008. As to BT’s contention that Emmert and Jehnke had breached their fiduciary obligations to BT, the court concluded that Emmert or Jehnke owed no fiduciary obligation to BT and that, even if they had such an obligation, they did not breach it. It [612]*612dismissed all the remaining claims and counterclaims with prejudice.4

On appeal, defendants challenge the trial court’s judgment. In particular, they challenge (1) the trial court’s ruling that Taggart’s transfer to BT is void; (2) the court’s expulsion of Taggart effective January 1, 2008; and (3) the court’s determination that Emmert and Jehnke did not have a fiduciary obligation or, if they did, that they did not breach that obligation. In addition, on cross-appeal, Taggart asserts that, even if the court properly expelled him from SPBC, it improperly calculated the buyout amount for his 25 percent interest in SPBC. As explained below, we reject all of those challenges and affirm the trial court’s judgment.

I. LEGAL FRAMEWORK

Because the parties’ dispute focuses on the law— both contractual and statutory — that governs various interests in SPBC, we describe the pertinent legal provisions in some detail. SPBC is a limited liability company that was formed in 1999 to develop a small office complex. Under ORS chapter 63, which relates to Oregon limited liability companies, and the company’s operating agreement, the interests of SPBC’s members in the LLC are not freely transferrable. Section 11 of the operating agreement governs the transfer of membership interests. Under Section 11.1(b), “[a] Member may not sell any portion of his or her member interest without first offering in writing to sell such interest to the other Members at a price to be determined by the offering Member.” If the other members decide to purchase the interest, under Section 11.1(b)(1), they may complete the purchase by making a payment of twenty percent of the purchase price, with the balance of the purchase price payable “in sixty (60) equal monthly installments including interest at the prime rate *** plus 200 basis points, adjusted quarterly [.]”

[613]*613A member may, however, assign his or her right to receive distributions without first obtaining the consent of the other members of the company under Section 11.2 of the operating agreement:

“Not withstanding Section 11.1, a Member may assign the Member’s right to receive distributions under this Agreement without the consent of the other Members. Such assignment shall not constitute a transfer of an ownership interest in the Company and shall not divest the assignor of voting or other rights as a Member, other than the right to receive distributions.”

Although members’ interests — other than the right to receive distributions — are not freely transferrable, the SPBC operating agreement spells out circumstances in which a member may transfer his or her interest in the company without obtaining consent. As pertinent here, under Section 11.3(b), a member may “transfer the Member’s ownership interest without being subject to Section 11.1” when the transfer is “to a trust or other entity controlled by the Member.” Notwithstanding such a transfer to a member-controlled entity, however,

“[t]he transferee in a transfer described in this Section 11.3 shall be admitted as a substitute Member only as provided in Section 11.4 (but without regard to paragraph (b) thereof).”

Section 11.4, in turn, provides:

“No person or entity, other than a person or entity who already is a Member, who acquires a membership interest in the Company shall be admitted as a Member of the Company, unless and until:
“(a) The requirements of Sections 11.1 or 11.3, in the opinion of counsel to the Company, are satisfied;
“(b) In the case of a transfer described in Section 11.1, Members holding a majority of the percentage member interests in the Company (not counting the member interest of the transferor) consent to the admission of the transferee as a fully substituted member;
“(c) The transferor and transferee execute and deliver to the Company the documents and instruments of conveyance necessary or appropriate, in the opinion of counsel [614]*614to the Company, to effect the transfer and to confirm the agreement of the transferee to be bound by the provisions of this Agreement; and
“(d) The transferee furnishes to the Company the transferee’s taxpayer identification number, sufficient information to determine the transferee’s initial tax basis in the member interest transferred, and any other information reasonably necessary to permit the Company to file all required federal and state tax returns and other legally required information, statements or returns.”

In sum, under the SPBC operating agreement, a member can transfer his or her interest in the company to another entity that the member controls, without first offering to sell the interest to the other members, but that entity will not become a member of SPBC until the conditions of Section 11.4 are satisfied. Additionally, under ORS 63.249(6),

“[a]ny otherwise permissible assignment of a membership interest shall be effective as to and binding on the limited liability company only after reasonable notice of and proof of the assignment have been provided to the managers of the limited liability company.”

In addition to limiting how a membership interest may be transferred, the SPBC operating agreement also governs how membership interests may be terminated. First, Section 12.1 of the agreement provides that “[n]o Member shall withdraw from the Company without first obtaining the consent of all other Members.” Section 12.3 outlines other events terminating membership.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
323 P.3d 551, 261 Or. App. 609, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sherwood-park-business-center-llc-v-taggart-orctapp-2014.