“Time is money,” Benjamin Franklin once famously said, creating one of the most enduring adages in the American business world.

The cliché, of course, refers to the opportunity cost of lost time and to the ideas that costs are incurred as time passes and that revenue cannot be generated through idleness.

A key take-away from the phrase is this: the longer something takes in the process, the more it costs.

Specifically in cases that involve liquidating a company’s assets, an equally important corollary comes to mind: the longer it takes to liquidate an asset, the lower the recovery will be.

 Performing tasks in parallel rather than in sequence is a method often used by healthy businesses to get more done sooner. 

This same method of operating works in adverse situations, too.

Sidney Turner

www.SidneyTurnerllc.com

A DLOM’s basic premise is that shares of a closely held corporation cannot be readily sold on a public market and therefore should be discounted to reflect the additional risk factors associated with the time and difficulty of finding buyers for non-publicly traded shares.

Sidney Turner

www.SidneyTurnerllc.com

Inadequate and defective documentation of ownership interest in a business is an all too common feature of closely held businesses and, after a dispute arise, litigation over an assert claim by adversely effected business partner’s standing (right) to sue is challenged.

The reasons for this state of affairs are many and diverse, e.g.:

• The owners lack a sophisticated understanding of the legal formalities involved in an ownership interest in the chosen form of business entity.
• The owners are unable or unwilling to spend the money for necessary legal and accounting services.
• The owners are family members or long-time friends who trust one another and believe they don’t need any written agreement or certification of ownership interests.

These circumstances should not deter you from investing in the required documentation. Make sure you get the proper documentation and protect your interest.

Sidney Turner

www.SidneyTurnerllc.com

Estate

No. 3D11-196
Lower Tribunal No. 10-4540

Third District Court of Appeal State of Florida

January Term, A.D. 2011
Filed: May 18, 2011

Opinion filed May 18, 2011.

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

An appeal from a non-final order from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Lawrence A. Schwartz and Gerald D. Hubbart, Judges.

May, Meacham & Davell, and William C. Davell, Carolyn B. Brombacher and Christopher D. Barber (Fort Lauderdale), for appellant.

Steven Silverman, for appellee.

Before GERSTEN and SALTER, JJ., and SCHWARTZ, Senior Judge.

SALTER, J.

Page 2

BankAtlantic appeals two non-final circuit court orders directing it to transfer the funds in a deceased physician’s professional association account to the depository account (at a different bank) established for the administration of his estate. We reverse both orders and remand for the entry of an order directing repayment of the funds (and any earnings thereon) to the account from which they were transferred.

BankAtlantic was a secured creditor of the late doctor’s professional association under a note and mortgage. The promissory note included a right of setoff:

RIGHT OF SETOFF. To the extent permitted by applicable law, Lender reserves a right of setoff in all Borrower’s accounts with Lender (whether checking, savings, or some other account)…. Borrower authorizes Lender, to the extent permitted by applicable law, to charge or setoff all sums owing on the indebtedness against any and all such accounts and, at Lender’s option, to administratively freeze all such accounts to allow Lender to protect Lender’s charge and setoff rights provided in this paragraph.

The decedent personally guaranteed his professional association’s promissory note, and his death constituted an event of default under that note. The orders requiring transfer of the funds to a different bank thus impaired BankAtlantic’s right of setoff. Although the parties agreed that the deceased physician owned all of the shares of his professional association, there was no evidence presented to support a “piercing of the corporate veil” under Dania Jai-Alai Palace v. Sykes, 450 So. 2d 1114 (Fla. 1984), or any other alter ego theory.

Page 3

While the appellee Estate was apparently entitled to take possession of the professional association stock held by the doctor at his death, ¹ no such conclusion extended to the association’s funds on deposit in the corporate name at BankAtlantic. In Gettinger v. Gettinger, 165 So. 2d 757 (Fla. 1964), the Supreme Court of Florida held that “the affairs of a corporation, even though substantially owned by a decedent, cannot be administered by decedent’s executor as assets of the decedent’s estate.” In this case, “substantially” is 100%, and the result is identical.

The Estate seeks affirmance of the orders below on three independent grounds: (1) that the orders are not appealable; (2) that the Estate has the power to “take charge of and marshal” the funds in the professional association account; and (3) that the probate court ruling should be upheld because no decision was made regarding any competing claims to the funds. None of these arguments is persuasive.

As to jurisdiction, the orders are reviewable non-final orders under Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.130(a)(3)(B). CRM Distrib., Inc. v. Resolution Trust Corp., 593 So. 2d 593 (Fla. 3d DCA 1992). Regarding the Estate’s second argument, section 69.031(1), Florida Statutes (2010), and the cases cited by the Estate refer to marshaling “part or all of the personal assets of the estate” and to the

Page 4

use of court-approved depositories for such assets. The point in this case is that the stock of the professional association is an asset of the Estate, but the funds of the professional association are a step removed from the Estate. The decedent’s Estate essentially ignored the separate corporate existence of the professional association and that entity’s obligations to its own creditors.

The third argument also fails. BankAtlantic’s rights are not protected just because the funds are frozen in a restricted depository account of the Estate. In this case, BankAtlantic’s possessory and contractual rights to setoff are impaired by the transfer to a different bank.²

Reversed and remanded, with directions to order the return of the transferred funds (and any interest earned on such funds while in the transferee bank’s possession) to BankAtlantic.
——–

Notes:

^1. § 733.607(1), Fla. Stat. (2010); Perez v. Lopez, 454 So. 2d 777 (Fla. 3d DCA 1984).

^2.As an example of another such impairment, if the transferee bank later failed, BankAtlantic would have to protect its interests as an indirect creditor of the estate’s depository account (not as a direct creditor of a named account holder/debtor) in the transferee bank’s liquidation.

Sidney Turner

www.SidneyTurnerllc.com

It is reported that the federal government seized eight properties. Other creditors are lining up to get, obtain liens, replevin property or recover property as not having been properly transferred. The race to the court was on.

A bankruptcy would stay and remove all civil legal action against the firm to the federal jurisdiction of a bankruptcy court. A Broward County Circuit Court judge appointed a receiver last week, to oversee the firm’s finances. The petitioning investors in the bankruptcy are also seeking emergency appointment of a Chapter 11 trustee because of a “continuing risk of loss, concealment, dissipation and/or destruction” of RRA’s property.

The bankruptcy court will be able to centralize all of the asset recovery efforts and manage the equitable distribution of the estate assets. Please see article in the South Florida Business Journal, Wednesday, November 11, 2009,