LLC Dissolution Statutes Under the Microscope: Podcast Interview with Professor Douglas Moll

August 20, 2018

Douglas K. Moll, Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center, is well known to business divorce aficionados for his many scholarly articles examining minority oppression and fiduciary duty in close corporations and LLCs, and as co-author with Robert Ragazzo of one of the leading treatises on closely held business organizations. He’s also familiar to regular readers of this blog, having been featured previously in an online interview and in Episode #8 of the Business Divorce Roundtable podcast.

Professor Moll recently published yet another, terrific article entitled Judicial Dissolution of the Limited Liability Company: A Statutory Analysis (19 Tennessee Journal of Business Law 81 [2017]) in which he brings some much-needed perspective to the statutory landscape of the diverse grounds for judicial dissolution of LLCs found among the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the several uniform and model acts promulgated since the 1990s. From the article’s abstract:

This article, prepared for the Business Law Prof Blog 2017 Symposium, examines the statutory grounds available to members who seek judicial dissolution of an LLC in all fifty states plus the District of Columbia. I also examined the judicial dissolution grounds in five model statutes: the 1992 Prototype LLC Act, the 2011 Revised Prototype LLC Act, the 1996 Uniform LLC Act, the 2006 Revised Uniform LLC Act, and the 2013 Revised Uniform LLC Act. Two charts are provided – one that provides the judicial dissolution grounds for each statute, and one that tabulates the different approaches.

Part I summarizes the methodology used and highlights the frequency of various statutory provisions. Part II analyzes two particular provisions—dissolution if it is not reasonably practicable to carry on the LLC’s business in conformity with its governing documents, and dissolution as a result of oppressive conduct by those in control. With respect to the “not reasonably practicable” language, the article argues that the impracticability of carrying on the business in conformity with either the certificate or the operating agreement should result in dissolution, but there is confusion over which statutory articulation is consistent with this result. With respect to the oppressive conduct ground, this article provides some possible explanations for why oppression-related dissolution statutes are less common in the LLC setting than in the corporation context.

Happily, Professor Moll accepted my return invitation to the podcast to discuss his findings. In the interview, a link to which appears below, Professor Moll highlights some surprising variations among the statutory expression of the prevailing not-reasonably-practicable dissolution standard. He also discusses some of the reasons for the relative scarcity — compared to close corporation statutes — of minority oppression as ground for judicial dissolution of LLCs, and the competing forces of freedom of contract and judicial paternalism that continue to shape the evolving statutory and common-law jurisprudence governing internal relations among LLC members.

Give it a listen. I guarantee you’ll be glad you did.