Tag: piercing the corporate veil

‘Half a Mil’ Conditional Judgment Too Harsh for Anemic Citation Response – IL First Dist.

Hayward v. Scorte, 2020 IL App (1st) 190476, reads like a creditors’ rights practice manual for its detailed discussion of the nature and scope of various creditor remedies under the Illinois supplementary proceedings and garnishment statutes.  (735 ILCS 5/2-1402 and 735 ILCS 5/12-701 et seq., respectively.)

The plaintiffs confirmed a half-million dollar arbitration award against a corporate defendant in a construction dispute and sought to collect. In post-judgment discovery, the post-judgment court (the Law Division’s Tax and Misc. Remedies Div.) found that the corporate debtor’s two owners failed to properly respond to citations served upon them by plaintiffs’ counsel.

The trial court entered a conditional judgment (later converted to a final one) against each corporate officer for the full amount of the underlying judgment.  The officers appealed.

Reversing, the First District first noted that supplementary proceedings in Illinois allow a judgment creditor to pursue any assets in the judgment debtor’s possession or that are being held by third parties and apply those assets to satisfy the judgment. See 735 ILCS 5/2-1402.

In the garnishment context, 735 ILCS 5/12-701 et seq., where a third party fails to respond to a garnishment summons, the creditor garnisher can request a conditional judgment against the garnishee. 735 ILCS 5/12-706.

Once the conditional judgment is entered, the creditor issues a summons to the respondent.  If the respondent still fails to answer the garnishment summons, the conditional judgment is confirmed or finalized. Once the garnishee responds to the conditional judgment summons, it isn’t bound by the earlier default and can litigate afresh. [21]

Section 12-706’s twin goals is to provide an incentive for respondents to answer a properly served garnishment summons and to protect a respondent from Draconian consequences of a single oversight. 735 ILCS 5/12-706. [21]

Code Section 2-1402 permits a court to enter any order or judgment that could be entered in a garnishment proceeding. 735 ILCS 5/2-1402(k-3).

But while Section 2-1402(k-3) incorporates the garnishment act’s full range of remedies, the section does not give a creditor broader rights than exist under garnishment law.  [23]

Conditional judgments are only allowed where a garnishee fails to appear and answer.  Here, the third-party respondents (the two corporate officers) did appear and answer the citation; the trial judge just deemed the answer incomplete.

The Court then noted that garnishment act Section 12-711(a) speaks to the precise situation here: it allows a judgment creditor to challenge the sufficiency of a garnishee’s answer and request a trial on those issues.  735 ILCS 5/12-711(a).

The garnishment statute is silent on the consequences of incomplete or insufficient answers.  Since the corporate officers did answer the underlying citations, the Court held that the trial court lacked statutory authority to enter a full money judgment against the individual defendants under Code Section 2-1402(k-3). [26]

Next, the Court examined the interplay between Section 2-1402(c)(3) and (c)(6).  The former section speaks to situations where a third party has embezzled or converted a judgment debtor’s assets.  The latter permits a  judgment creditor to sue a third party (i.e. to bring a separate cause of action) where that third party is indebted to a judgment debtor.

The Court pointed out that neither section allowed a court to assess the entire underlying judgment against a third party without a specific finding that party converted or embezzled a debtor’s assets. [27]

In fact, the lone statutory basis for a court to enter a full judgment against a third-party is where it violates the citation’s restraining provision – Section 2-1402(f)(1).

This section allows a court to punish a third party that transfers, disposes of or interferes with a judgment debtor’s non-exempt property – after a citation is served – by entering a money judgment for the lesser of (a) the unpaid amount of a judgment or (b) the value of the asset transferred. [27, 28]

The Court then stressed that a citation lien applies only to property transfers occurring after a citation is served.  Pre-citation transfers, by contrast, cannot form the basis of a money judgment against a third party.  Since the plaintiffs’ conditional judgment motion was predicated in part on property transfers occurring some two years before the citations were issued, they fell beyond the scope of sanctions considered by the trial court.

An additional ground for the First District’s reversal lay in the absence of proof that the corporate officers held any corporate assets.  Illinois law is clear that before a court can enter a judgment against a third party, there must be some record evidence that the third party possesses assets belonging to the debtor.

Since there was no statutory bases to assess the full money judgment against the two erstwhile corporate principals and since there was no evidence either principal had any corporate debtor assets in their possession, the trial court overstepped by entering a money judgment against the individual corporate officer defendants.

Take-aways:

A third party must be in possession of a debtor’s assets before a money judgment can issue against that third party;

While the garnishment act allows for a conditional judgment where a respondent fails to appear and answer a garnishment summons, and Illinois’s supplementary proceedings statute incorporates garnishment remedies, the garnishment act does not permit a conditional judgment against a garnishee who does in fact answer a garnishment summons;

A judgment creditor should file a separate veil-piercing suit against a defunct corporation’s principals if the creditor believes they are holding erstwhile corporate assets.

Debtor’s Use of LLC As ‘Personal Piggy Bank’ Leads to Turnover and Charging Orders

Golfwood Square, LLC v. O’Malley, 2018 IL App(1st) 172220-U, examines the interplay between a charging order and a third party citation to discover assets turnover order against an LLC member debtor.  The plaintiff in Golfwood engaged in a years’ long effort to unspool a judgment debtor’s multi-tiered business entity arrangement in the hopes of collecting a sizeable (about $1M) money judgment.

Through post-judgment proceedings, the plaintiff learned that the debtor owned a 90% interest in an LLC (Subsidiary or Sub-LLC) that was itself the sole member of another LLC (Parent LLC) that received about $225K from the sale of a Chicago condominium.

Plaintiff also discovered the defendant had unfettered access to Parent LLC’s bank account and had siphoned over $80K from it since the judgment date.

In 2013 and 2017, plaintiff respectively obtained a charging order against Sub-LLC and a turnover order against Parent LLC in which the plaintiff sought to attach the remaining condominium sale proceeds.  The issue confronting the court was whether a judgment creditor could get a turnover order against a parent company to enforce a prior charging order against a subsidiary entity.  In deciding for the creditor, the Court examined the content and purpose of citations to discover assets turnover orders and LLC charging orders.

Code Section 2-1402 empowers a judgment creditor can issue supplementary proceedings to discover whether a debtor is in possession of assets or whether a third party is holding assets of a debtor that can be applied to satisfy a judgment.

Section 30-20 of the Limited Liability Company Act allows that same judgment creditor to apply for a charging order against an LLC member’s distributional interest in a limited liability company. Once a charging order issues from the court, it becomes a lien (or “hold”) on the debtor’s distributional interest and requires the LLC to pay over to the charging order recipient all distributions that would otherwise be paid to the judgment debtor. 735 ILCS 5/2-1402; 805 ILCS 180/30-20. Importantly, a charging order applicant does not have to name the LLC(s) as a party defendant(s) since the holder of the charging order doesn’t gain membership or management rights  in the LLC. [⁋⁋ 22, 35]

Under Parent LLC’s operating agreement, once the condominium was sold, Parent LLC was to dissolve and distribute all assets directly to Sub-LLC – Parent’s lone member.  From there, any distributions from Sub-LLC should have gone to defendant (who held a 90% ownership interest in Sub-LLC) and then turned over to the plaintiff.

However, defendant circumvented the charging order by accessing the sale proceeds (held in Parent LLC’s account) and distributing them to himself. The Court noted that documents produced during post-judgment discovery showed that the defendant spent nearly $80,000 of the sale proceeds on his personal debts and to pay off his other business obligations.

Based on the debtor’s conduct in accessing and dissipating Parent LLC’s bank account with impunity, and preventing Parent LLC from distributing the assets to Sub-LLC, where they could be reached by plaintiff, the trial court ordered the debtor to turn all Parent LLC’s remaining account funds over to the plaintiff to enforce the earlier charging order against Sub-LLC.

The court rejected the defendant’s argument that Parent LLC was in serious debt and that the condo sale proceeds were needed to pay off its debts. The Court found this argument clashed with defendant’s deposition testimony where he stated under oath that Parent LLC “had no direct liabilities.” This judicial admission – a clear, unequivocal statement concerning a fact within a litigant’s knowledge – was binding on the defendant and prevented him from trying to contradict this testimony. The argument also fell short in light of defendant’s repeatedly raiding Parent LLC’s account to pay his personal debts and those of his other business ventures all to the exclusion of plaintiff.

The court then summarily dispensed with defendant’s claim that the plaintiff improperly pierced the corporate veils of Parent LLC and Sub-LLC in post-judgment proceedings. In Illinois, a judgment creditor typically cannot pierce a corporate veil in supplementary proceedings. Instead, it must file a new action in which it seeks piercing as a remedy for an underlying cause of action.

The Court found that the trial court’s turnover order did not hold defendant personally liable for either LLC’s debt. Instead, the turnover order required Parent LLC to turnover assets belonging to the judgment debtor – the remaining condominium sale proceeds – to the plaintiff creditor.

Afterwords:

This case presents in sharp relief the difficulty of collecting a judgment from a debtor who operates under a protective shield of several layers of corporate entities.

Where a debtor uses an LLC’s assets as his “personal piggy bank,” Golfwood and cases like it show that a court won’t hesitate to vindicate a creditor’s recovery right through use of a turnover and charging order.

The case is also noteworthy as it illustrates a court looking to an LLC operating agreement for textual support for its turnover order.

Veil Piercing Claim Triable By Jury; Consumer Fraud Act Applies to Failed Gas Station Sale – IL 3rd Dist.

An Illinois appeals court recently affirmed a $700K money judgment for a gas station buyer in a fraud case against the seller.

The plaintiff gas station buyer in Benzakry v. Patel, 2017 IL App(3d) 160162 sued the seller when the station closed only a few months after the sale.

The plaintiff alleged he relied on the seller’s misrepresenting the financial health and trustworthiness of the station tenant which led the plaintiff to go forward with the station purchase.  Plaintiff sued for common law and statutory fraud and sought to pierce the corporate veil of the LLC seller.

Affirming judgment for the plaintiff, the Third District discusses, among other things, the piercing the corporate veil remedy, the required evidentiary foundation for business records, the reliance element of fraud and the scope of the consumer fraud statute.

Piercing the Corporate Veil: Triable By Bench or Jury?

The jury pierced the seller LLC’s corporate veil and imposed liability on the lone LLC member.

The Court addressed this issue of first impression on appeal: whether a piercing the corporate veil claim is one for the court or jury.  The Court noted a split in Federal authority on the point.  In FMC v. Murphree, 632 F.2d 413 (5th Cir. 1980), the 5th Circuit held that a jury could hear a piercing claim while the  7th Circuit reached the opposite result (only a court can try a piercing action) in IFSC v. Chromas Technologies, 356 F.3d 731 (7th Cir. 2004).

The Court declined to follow either case since they applied only Federal procedural law (they were diversity cases).  The Court instead looked to Illinois state substantive law for guidance.

Generally, there is no right to a jury trial in equitable claims and piercing the corporate veil is considered an equitable remedy.  However, Code Section 2-1111 vests a court with discretion to direct any issue(s) involved in an equitable proceeding to be tried by a jury.  The appeals court found that the trial court acted within its discretion in deciding that the piercing claim should be decided by a jury. (¶¶ 29-30)

Consumer fraud – Advertisement on Web = ‘Public Injury’

The Third District reversed the trial court’s directed verdict for the defendants on the plaintiff’s Consumer Fraud Act (CFA) count.  Consumer fraud predicated on deceptive practices requires the plaintiff to prove (1) a deceptive act or practice by a defendant, (2) defendant’s intent that the plaintiff rely on the deception, (3) the occurrence of the deception during a course of conduct involving trade or commerce, (4) actual damage to the plaintiff, and (5) damage proximately caused by the deception.

The trial court sided with the defendant on this count since the plaintiff didn’t prove that defendants conduct resulted in injury to the public generally.  CFA Section 10a (815 ILCS 505/10a) used to require a plaintiff to prove that a misrepresentation involved trade practice that addressed the market generally.  However, a 1990 amendment to the Act changed that.  The current version of the Act doesn’t require a plaintiff to show public injury except under limited circumstances.

Even so, the Court still held that the defendant’s misstating the gas station’s annual fuel and convenience store sales on a generally accessible website constituted a public injury under the CFA.

Going further, the Court construed the CFA broadly by pointing to the statutory inclusion of the works “trade” and “commerce.”  This evinced the legislative intent to expand the CFA’s scope.  Since defendant’s misrepresentations concerning the tenant were transmitted to the public via advertisements and to the plaintiff through e-mails, the Court viewed this as deceptive conduct involving trade or commerce under the CFA.  (¶¶ 81-82)

Computer-Generated Business Records: Document Retention vs. Creation

While it ultimately didn’t matter (the business records were cumulative evidence that didn’t impact the judgment amount), the Court found that bank statements offered into evidence did not meet the test for admissibility under Illinois evidence rules.

The proponent of computer-generated business records must show (1) the equipment that created a document is recognized as standard, and (2) the computer entries were made in the regular course of business at or reasonably near the happening of the event recorded.

Showing “mere retention” of a document isn’t enough: the offering party must produce evidence of a document’s creation to satisfy the business records admissibility standard.  Here, the plaintiff failed to offer foundational testimony concerning the creation of the seller’s bank statements and those statements shouldn’t have been admitted into evidence.

Take-aways:

1/ The Court has discretion to order that an equitable piercing the corporate veil claim be tried to a jury;

2/ Inadequate capitalization, non-functioning shareholders and commingling of funds are badges of fraud or injustice sufficient to support a piercing the corporate veil remedy;

3/ Computer-generated business records proponent must offer foundational testimony of a document’s creation to get the records in over a hearsay objection;

4/ False advertising data on a public website can constitute a deceptive practice under the consumer fraud statute.