My cousin, "Sandy," opened a business in 50-50 with a partner, "Andy", who has turned out to be dishonest, erratic, and unstable. The business is a year old and had become extremely lucrative thanks to my cousin's business smarts. Basically the business started becoming very successful, Andy was onsite more than Sandy, and he (unstable and possibly nursing a drug addiction, I think) started embezzling money, underreporting profits, the whole bit. Andy also got the bright idea to kick Sandy out of the business. Andy has more money (sudden windfall) than my cousin and knows it, has shut the whole thing down and REFUSES to buy Sandy out (but will only allow Sandy to buy HIM out for ~$250,000, which is money he knows she does not have) out hoping to starve her out so he gives up and leaves. WTF?
Basically, the last few months have been a nightmare. Cousin, Sandy, has gone significantly into debt after investing in this business, has a job in a dying industry that will not support her much longer, and would have a hard time finding any other job to support her because of health reasons.
She had finally struck gold with a meticulously-researched business idea and went in with an equal partner. She's co-owner and his name is on everything as having 50% ownership with Andy. Business is wildly successful and starts to look like it will be for quite some time. She starts to get a bad feeling about Andy (he's onsite more than Sandy is, who has to work when the business is open) because she notices he's behaving strangely, posting all over business' social media as if he's the sole owner, posting things without consulting her (not to mention sketchy gofundmes begging for donations? when they are doing very well financially?). I met Andy and got a terrible feeling too -- I think (but cannot prove, not that it would matter) he's developed a drug addiction that is causing him to behave erratically. She does some digging and finds Andy's been embezzling *substantial* amounts of money, not logging anything paid for in cash, and so on.
She confronts him, they now hate each other, and in response Andy's been on a campaign to get Sandy kicked out without buying him out. He's given her the option of either paying HIM a huge sum of money, accepting a "buy out" of 1/25th what she expects from him (like $10,000, just ridiculous), or agreeing to sell the business for what appaers to be barely anything to an outsider. Sandy's on the hook for half the substantial rent for the business in the meantime. She's drowning. The main leverage she has over Andy is that as co-owner she can keep the business shut down indefinitely, and Andy is eager to open back up and get things started again.
Sandy's meeting with a lawyer for a free consultation, but any advice about how to proceed, or resources to look for (this is in SoCal)? Is this the sort of case lawyers could take on contingency? We are not legally savvy people here and are sort of flying blind here. TIA! |
Video
Web
Image
Music
BlogU
