Bilal v. Siegel CA2/5
Plaintiff Kamal Bilal (plaintiff) held a minority interest in Westco Petroleum Distributors, Inc. (WPD), a gasoline distribution company. Plaintiff sued the majority shareholders, defendants Antone Nino (Antone) and Nasrin Shakeri Nino (Nasrin), initially alleging they wrongly excluded him from participating in WPD’s management and executed unauthorized transactions that injured both plaintiff and WPD. A later amended complaint filed by plaintiff, however, alleged injury only to himself and omitted any allegations that defendant injured WPD. The trial court sustained a demurrer to the amended complaint without leave to amend, concluding plaintiff’s prior pleadings revealed the gist of the action sought redress for injury to WPD, making it a shareholder derivative action, but plaintiff had not complied with statutory requirements to bring such an action. We consider whether the trial court properly applied the sham pleading doctrine to disregard plaintiff’s allegations of indi
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