Fiduciary Duties

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Plaintiff could not make tort claims, including breach of fiduciary duty claims, against a Bank for mismanagement of its investments. "As a general rule, parties to a contract ‘owe no special duty to one another beyond the terms of the contract.’ This general rule even applies to bank-customer relationships like the one at issue."

Plaintiff…

The Court dismissed the derivative claim of a minority shareholder who alleged that the majority shareholders of the corporation had breached their fiduciary duty to the minority shareholders by failing to make distributions, failing to investigate allegations on that subject, and terminating the minority shareholder’s employment. 

The Court held that this was not a proper…

A minority member (Kaplan) of a limited liability company, who was the LLC’s only source of funds and who controlled the LLC’s checkbook, did not have fiduciary duties to the LLC and its other members.

Judge Tennille held:

Being an investor in a company does not create a fiduciary relationship. . . . Kaplan, as a minority shareholder, had

…

The Court allowed a motion to bifurcate in this shareholder dispute.  Shortly before trial, the Court agreed to try first Plaintiffs’ claims for reasonable expectations, mismanagement, and breach of fiduciary duty; and after determination of those issues to try, if necessary, the issues of valuation and dissolution.  The Order allowing bifurcation was entered with the consent…

Defendant claimed that the Plaintiff, who was the majority shareholder of a family corporation, couldn’t have had an expectation of a fiduciary duty from him because the Defendant had had an affair with Plaintiff’s wife.  The Court disagreed, and said that the existence of a fiduciary duty under these circumstances was a question of fact.

Full Opinion

A counterclaim by a member of a North Carolina LLC against the LLC’s lender for aiding and abetting a breach of fiduciary duty was derivative, not direct.

The Court relied on “[t]he well-established general rule . . . that shareholders cannot pursue individual causes of action against third parties for wrongs or injuries to the corporation that…

Paintiffs, who had suffered signficant losses on variable annuity policies sold to them by the defendant agents and insurance companies, asserted claims on multiple theories: breach of fiduciary duty, constructive fraud, unfair and deceptive practices, negligence, negligent misrepresentation, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty, and unjust enrichment. 

The Court dismissed some claims and ordered…

The Court denied Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s unfair and deceptive practices claim.  It rejected the argument that the matter before the Court was simply a private dispute which did not implicate the consuming public or the general marketplace, and was therefore not "in commerce."

The Court held that the statute reaches "derivative claims arising…

Claims against the lender which had financed an acquisition gone awry were barred by the exculpatory provisions of a subordination agreement.  Georgia law applied, and Georgia law permits one contracting party to waive all recourse in the event of breach by the other.  The exculpatory provision was valid and an absolute defense to plaintiffs’ claims…