You own 35% of a profitable Astoria restaurant group. For five years, distributions hit your account every quarter like clockwork. Then your managing member stopped distributing — but you notice he's driving a new Range Rover, paid off his Forest Hills mortgage, and bought a place in Montauk. When you ask for an explanation, he tells you the business needs to "retain earnings" while quietly paying himself a $400,000 "management fee" on top of his ownership share. This is one

You run a Brooklyn manufacturing business. Your largest customer — a Manhattan retailer with a five-year, $8 million supply contract — just shorted you on a $200,000 payment and is two weeks late on another. You're tempted to halt production, cancel future shipments, and sue. But here's the trap: if a New York judge later decides those breaches weren't material, you become the breaching party. You lose your damages claim, you owe their damages, and you forfeit any attorney-fe