| | | It's quite legal and routine to transfer assets and not liabilities in the business brokerage world. In other words, you do not purchase the corporate shell itself, but rather what's 100% owned inside the corporate shell, which you then put under your own new corporate shell. This does not make the liabilities, if any, disappear, but rather keeps them with the prior owner.
Yes, it would be hard for a prior owner of a message board to honor a lifetime membership if said message board was sold to someone else, but what can you do about it? If you sue, all the prior owner will do is declare the now empty shell bankrupt and you'd be wasting your time. You could also sue the new owner (heck, you can sue anyone for anything if you really want), but the cost of a lawsuit would likely far exceed the benefit of "winning", assuming you actually won given the long odds against you. But most new owners don't want to piss off the customers they essentially just purchased even if they "know" they can win in court, so try to at least offer something of value to keep them as customers. Said new owners walk a fine line when trying to communicate the message of "we don't owe you anything, but..."
Therefore, the goal for any new owner, obviously, is to make such a topic of discussion a "moot point" by appeasing the purchased customer base as quickly as possible. That can often be a tricky proposition. But as long as new management is listening and doing their best, that's about all one can ask of them.
- Jeff |
|
