Did the judge try to order me to pierce the corporate veil? In a legal proceeding a couple of months ago, I was unfortunately at the disadvantage of not being represented by my attorney. (There is a reason which is unrelated to this question.) I'm not a lawyer; I have no idea how things are supposed to proceed in court. I'm also a CEO of a startup which was pre-revenue and at the time of this event, had not yet closed our current round. As is the way of startups, our owners' draw was less than $500 a month for both myself and my co-founder for the entire preceding year; neither of us had been paid in a very long time. I am not the only managing member of our company, and while technically I could access any aspect of the company I demand, our CFO has authority over all of our financial concerns and my co-founder, our COO, manages our day-to-day operations. Of the money in the business bank account, every last dime came from accredited angel investors on convertible promissory notes (preferred - all the investors have repayment preference.) At the time of this event, our company was still formed as an LLC. My question is this: the judge asserted that simply because technically I have access to do so, I could be expected to clean out the business bank account to address whatever individual, personal matters were at hand. Surely I can't be ordered to steal from our investors? Cleaning out the business bank account would be embezzling or fraud or both? Is there a remedy for a judge who "orders" you to break the law? (Not asking if the order would be tossed out - asking if any kind of rebuke exists) Noteworthy: Since no circumstances exist under which I will be compelled to rip off my investors, I simply proposed a settlement that leveraged an inheritance, hence this question is not an issue of my personal circumstances; I'm just curious.
Judges often issue orders and warrants that require people or entities to transfer property from one party to another. For example, a search warrant allows law enforcement to seize personal property. A garnishment requires an employer to transfer a worker's wages to someone else. A judgment can affirm that property was stolen and thereby invalidate what was previously good title to the property. Like any judicial order, such judgments can be found to be invalid and/or illegal. But unless and until they are modified, a judicial order is presumed to be lawful. In fact, it has the force of law. (It is not inaccurate to say a judgment is "law.") There are a few remedies for unfair, improper, or illegal judgments. The most common include: Motions for reconsideration. If a court makes a mistake of fact or law, this is the most expedient way to bring that to its attention and ask for an appropriate modification to the judgment. Appeals. Any party adversely affected by a judgment can usually find grounds to appeal it to a higher court. Of course, things can get messy for affected parties in scenarios like you describe. If a court orders you to transfer money from one person to another, then you cannot be found guilty of a crime for complying with the letter of that order. But depending on the broader circumstances you could later be found personally liable to the proper owners of the money. E.g., they might assert any number of legal claims that result in a court granting another judgment against you for restitution to them.
The official judgements do not reveal the funding for these lawyers; so where can I find this information? Nowhere. The commercial arrangements between lawyers and their clients are private and confidential like any other business transactions. You have no more right to know this then you do to know how your neighbour pays their mortgage. how could she have funded litigation in the EWHC and then EWCA before the UKSC? She may have rich parents or another benefactor who has in interest in her or the outcome of the case. She may have won the lottery. She may be the heiress of a dead rich uncle. By the way, "having" student loans does not mean you "need" student loans. Interest rates on student loans are cheap - if I need to pay $10,000 for a course and have $10,000 earning 5%, I would be nuts to use that if I could take out a loan at 3%.
When an entity goes bankrupt, its affairs are subject to detailed court supervision and creditors rights with respect to the bankrupt entity are severely limited by an "automatic stay" that funnels all disputes between creditors and the entity to bankruptcy court. This process, in the case of a medium to large sized business, is very expensive. If lots of creditors of the consolidated group are creditors of an entity that doesn't have any assets, it may not be worth the trouble to go through that process, since those creditors will get nothing, or there may be other reasons that it needs to function as a non-bankrupt entity. The creditors of the non-bankrupt LLC could force an involuntary bankruptcy, if they suspect that some creditors are being unduly favored or if they want more transparency, but they might prefer a non-bankrupt company if it allowed them to pursue their creditor's rights outside of bankruptcy and it had some assets. There are some very tricky collective action problems involved in cases like these, that must be made with imperfect information. It could be that the parent company is looking for a quick reorganization that is insulated from the day to day affairs of the company and involves a restructuring of only long term debt and a subsidiary bankruptcy would complicate a simple, pre-packaged plan. Still, it is hard to know with limited information.
One path would be to get compliance, by demonstrating that it is legally required. The best evidence that he is legally required to wear a mask is this recent mandate from the Department of Public Health. However, I cannot find a corresponding executive order, which may be in a generic form empowering CDPH to issue orders. Any imposition of penalties for violation must be publicly announced and rest on legislative authority. The mandate is not generally enforced, except in a few cases regarding bars and restaurants. There are various persuasive avenues that you could pursue, such as asking CDPH to come talk to him (unlikely, but you could try), complaining to the property owner, appealing to local social media to apply pressure (possibly putting yourself at legal risk for defamation, if you make a false statement). There are two more involved legal actions to contemplate. One is to terminate the lease and move elsewhere. This would likely result in an action to collect the remainder of the rent, but the strategy would be to argue that the manager has interfered with your private enjoyment of the premise. A second, highly improbable, is to sue the manager and get an enforceable court order requiring him to wear a mask. Courts have a prejudice against ordering people to take actions when other options exist (terminating the lease, monetary compensation). It could be an interesting but expensive test case to see if you could get a judge to order the manager to wear a mask. So yes they are obligated to wear masks, but legal enforcement is going to be difficult at best.
what responsibilities/liabilities does/will his company have given that it's in possession of my property? None. There is no contract (implicit or otherwise) between the owner and you. The owner receives no consideration from you in exchange for storing your goods, and an essential element of contracts is an exchange of considerations. Thus, he has no obligation to continue storing your goods. Another essential element in contract law is that the agreement --meaning the conditions thereof-- be entered knowingly and willfully. Since the time of making the arrangement and up to now, you were reasonably unaware of the likelihood of an obligation to pay the owner. This preempts the owner's right to start billing you. If anything, you would need to prove special circumstances to avail yourself of a viable claim of promissory estoppel. See Havens v. C &amp; D Plastics, Inc., 124 Wn.2d 158, 171-172 (1994): To obtain recovery in promissory estoppel, plaintiff must establish (1) [a] promise which (2) the promisor should reasonably expect to cause the promisee to change his position and (3) which does cause the promisee to change his position (4) justifiably relying upon the promise, in such a manner that (5) injustice can be avoided only by enforcement of the promise. However, the viability and duration of any relief pursuant to promissory estoppel seems very unlikely in the situation you describe. The hardship you are undergoing --and which prompted you to store your goods there-- is unfortunate. But generally speaking, a third party (such as the owner) who is unrelated to the causation or prolongation of that hardship cannot be lawfully forced to aid you for free.
First of all, this assumes that the debt consolidation firm would be willing to buy, and the CC company willing to sell. With a trial already scheduled, this might well not be the case. Secondly, when (if) the debt consolidation firm buys the debt, they buy the rights of the seller. In many states the trial could go forward, with the debt consolidation firm substituted as plaintiff. It is not automatic that a sale of the debt would postpone the legal case. Certainly if this happened once, it seems very unlikely that a second debt consolidation firm would buy the debt from the first. And as the comments by Moo and ohwilleke suggest, such a scheme would be fraudulent and criminal, if discovered. It might also constitute contempt of court for intentionally abusing the process of the court. Not a good or safe idea.
It isn't 100% clear from the question if a case has been filed in court, or someone was just planning on filing a lawsuit, which is an important fact. It seems like the ex filed a court case and you hired attorneys who responded. If there is a court case filed, that can't just be abandoned until all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed in the eyes of the court. The lawyers can't quit unless the court gives them permission to do so. Usually, lawyers are entitled to be paid for all of the work they do and out of pocket charges they incur in a case, until it is wrapped up, even if some wrap up work happens after the event that determines the final outcome of the case like your ex deciding to abandon his arguments. But, otherwise, if there isn't a pending court case, you normally have the power to tell your lawyers to stop everything and give you the moment left (if any) in your retainer. At first read, it almost sounded as if your lawyers are willing to do that, but are warning you that your ex might continue to be a problem after the lawyers quit and that if that happens, it will be more costly and time consuming to start all over dealing with the threatened lawsuit that your ex made, than it would be to get it over and done with now. But, upon closer inspection, it seems that there is a pending lawsuit and that this is the issue.
The parenthesized part means that if you are being compelled by law to disclose some confidential information, you must promptly notify the company of that fact. They could they respond by trying to get you excluded as a witness, or to limit your testimony, but you don't have to care what they do once they've been notified that you were subpoenaed. It may well be that every time the opposing side asks you a question, "your" side will object, and the judge will decide whether to sustain or overrule the objection. The only way in which you would defer to the company lawyer is by not answering the question before the question is finished (i.e. give the attorney 2 seconds to voice an objection). You would not have to "bring" the employer's lawyer along to a deposition, but that lawyer would probably be present and would similarly raise objections, if he felt like it. Your duty is simply to tell the company that you are being compelled to testify. In case the police or a detective agency are investigating the matter and they come to interview you, you are not compelled by law to answer (or to hand over documents), therefore you are supposed to decline to answer (and you are not obligated to inform the company that someone asked a question). As for an administrative subpoena, the perhaps tricky part will be knowing whether you are being compelled to testify, or invited to testify. The wording of the paperwork should inform you whether this is compulsory.