Justia Commercial Law Opinion Summaries

A major equity investor contributed $65 million to a joint venture formed to acquire and develop a luxury residential tower in New York City. The project was financed with significant loans, including a $325 million mezzanine loan from Apollo entities. After construction cost overruns put the mezzanine loan in default, Apollo and the joint venture entered a forbearance agreement splitting the loan and securing a portion with the joint venture’s equity. Apollo later assigned the junior mezzanine loan to Spruce Capital Partners, which then initiated a strict foreclosure under the Uniform Commercial Code. This process extinguished the joint venture’s equity—including the plaintiff’s investment—while allegedly allowing the project sponsor to retain a role and equity interest. The investor claimed that Apollo, Spruce, and the sponsor colluded to cut it out of the project’s value through assignment and foreclosure.The Supreme Court, New York County, dismissed the investor’s breach of implied covenant claim against Spruce but allowed the claim against Apollo to proceed, while dismissing tortious interference claims. The Appellate Division, First Department, reversed in part by dismissing the implied covenant claim against Apollo, holding that Apollo’s sole discretion to assign the loan foreclosed such a claim, and otherwise affirmed the dismissal of the tortious interference claims.The New York Court of Appeals held that a party’s sole discretion to assign a loan does not exempt it from the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The Court concluded that the plaintiff sufficiently pleaded that Apollo may have exercised its assignment right as part of a bad faith scheme to deprive the investor of the benefit of its bargain, reviving the implied covenant claim against Apollo. The Court affirmed the dismissal of the tortious interference claims for insufficient pleading. The case was remitted to Supreme Court for further proceedings on the implied covenant claim. View "111 W. 57th Inv. LLC v 111 W57 Mezz Inv. LLC" on Justia Law

In 2016, Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), offered a bond swap whereby its noteholders could exchange unsecured notes due in 2017 for new, secured notes due in 2020. PDVSA defaulted in 2019, and the National Assembly of Venezuela passed a resolution declaring the bond swap a "national public contract" requiring its approval under Article 150 of the Venezuelan Constitution. PDVSA, along with its subsidiaries PDVSA Petróleo S.A. and PDV Holding, Inc., initiated a lawsuit seeking a judgment declaring the 2020 Notes and their governing documents "invalid, illegal, null, and void ab initio, and thus unenforceable." The case was taken to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which certified three questions to the New York Court of Appeals.The New York Court of Appeals, in answering the first question, ruled that Venezuelan law governs the validity of the notes under Uniform Commercial Code § 8-110 (a) (1), which encompasses plaintiffs' arguments concerning whether the issuance of the notes was duly authorized by the Venezuelan National Assembly under the Venezuelan Constitution. However, New York law governs the transaction in all other respects, including the consequences if a security was "issued with a defect going to its validity." Given the court's answer to the first certified question, it did not answer the remaining questions. View "Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. v MUFG Union Bank, N.A." on Justia Law

The Court of Appeals held that federal bankruptcy law did not preempt Plaintiff's state law claims asserted against non-debtor third parties for tortious interference with a contract.Plaintiff loaned $147,250,000 to nonparties "Mezz Borrower" and "Mortgage Borrower" (collectively, Borrowers). Borrowers later defaulted, and Plaintiff sought to conduct a foreclosure sale of Mezz Borrower's 100 percent membership interest in Mortgage Borrower pursuant to the pledge and security agreement. Mezz Borrower and Mortgage Borrower subsequently filed separate voluntary petitions for chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court. Plaintiff then commenced this action in state court alleging that Defendants had tortiously interfered with the loan agreements between Plaintiff and the nonparty borrowers. Defendants - various affiliated persons and entities - moved for summary judgment on the ground that the action was preempted by the Bankruptcy Code. Supreme Court denied the motion, holding that the action was not preempted because it did not involve the bankruptcy. The Appellate Division reversed, concluding that Plaintiff's claims were preempted by federal law because damages arose only because of the bankruptcy filings. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that Defendants failed to meet their burden of establishing that federal bankruptcy law preempted Plaintiff's tortious interference claims. View "Sutton 58 Associates LLC v. Pilevsky" on Justia Law

The underlying federal action involved a dispute between General Motors LLC (GM), a franchisor and Chevrolet car manufacturer, and Beck Chevrolet Co., Inc., an automobile dealership with a Chevrolet franchise. Beck sued GM alleging violations of the Dealer Act. The district court ruled against Beck on its claims. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit determined that resolution depended on unsettled New York law and certified two questions requiring the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of two provisions of New York’s Franchised Motor Vehicle Dealer Act. The Court of Appeals answered as follows: (1) the use of a franchisor sales performance standard that relies on statewide data and some local variances but fails to account for local brand popularity to determine compliance with a franchise agreement is unlawful under the Dealer Act; and (2) a franchisor’s unilateral change of a dealer’s geographic sales area does not constitute a prohibited modification to the franchise. View "Beck Chevrolet Co., Inc. v. General Motors LLC" on Justia Law

In this dispute between a law firm and two banks, the issues presented were (1) the scope of the duty a payor bank owed to a non-customer depositor of a counterfeit check and (2) the scope of the duty a depository bank owed its customer when it acted as a collecting bank during the check collection process. The court held that neither the depository/collecting bank nor the payor bank violated any duty owed to the depositor and that summary judgment dismissing the complaint was properly granted. View "Greenberg, Trager & Herbst, LLP v. HSBC Bank USA, et al." on Justia Law