Common Business Disputes That Require A Litigation Attorney

Disputes are an unfortunate but often inevitable part of doing business.While some disputes present only a minor disruption to your operations, others can seriously threaten your business’s productivity, revenue, and brand if they are not dealt with quickly and effectively. Business litigation attorneys routinely help business owners to navigate and successfully resolve commercial disputes of varying complexity. Hiring an experienced, commercially astute business litigation attorney to represent your business throughout the dispute resolution process will allow you to focus on growing your enterprise, safe in the knowledge that your business’s best interests are being taken care of.

In this article we discuss the potential disputes your business may face, and the variety of dispute resolution processes available for addressing them.

Breach Of Contract

Contracts are the lifeblood of most business operations. A contract is a legal agreement that imposes obligations on (and grants rights to) the parties to the agreement. When one party to a contract fails to discharge their obligations as agreed and fails to remedy the situation within a reasonable time period, the other party is entitled to file a civil complaint and initiate legal proceedings to enforce the terms of the contract. For example, if a supplier agrees to deliver materials of a certain minimum quality and they fall short of this standard, the supplier has committed a breach of contract.

Business litigation attorneys frequently represent businesses in disputes concerning supplier contracts, license agreements, service level agreements, contracts of sale, loan agreements, lease agreements and more. In some cases, these disputes can be resolved through correspondence and negotiation, but in others, court or arbitration proceedings are necessary.

Business Torts

Business torts are another common type of business dispute. A tort is an intentional, unlawful act or omission by one business that causes financial loss to another. Reputational damage, a loss of profit, wasted expenses, and lost market share are all possible forms of financial loss.

One example of a business tort is tortious interference in contractual relations: this occurs when a business – usually a competitor – interferes in the business relationship between another business and a third party, causing that relationship to end. Fraudulent misrepresentation is another kind of business tort that occurs when one person knowingly makes false statements to another person, who relied on such statements when they entered into a contract with the fraudulent party. This tort is sometimes referred to as fraudulent inducement to contract.

Business torts are complex cases that require skilled business litigation attorneys to ensure that your business’s claims are prosecuted successfully. It can be especially challenging to prove that your business has suffered loss as a result of another business’s tortious conduct, especially when that loss is difficult to quantify because it is reputational in nature, for example. Hiring an experienced legal team will bolster your business’s chances of receiving the compensation it deserves.

Partnership And Shareholder Disputes

Unfortunately, the strain of running a commercial enterprise can take its toll on even the strongest of partnerships. It is not unusual for business partners to experience conflict at some point, often in relation to fundamental decisions concerning the future direction of the business. The misappropriation of business assets or business opportunities, financial mismanagement or theft, and disagreements over the distribution of profits are all frequent causes of partnership disputes.

Another type of dispute that involves the owners of an enterprise is a shareholder dispute. Shareholder disputes may arise between shareholders themselves (e.g. between minority and majority shareholders) or between shareholders and the board of directors (e.g. in circumstances where a director has breached their fiduciary duties). Florida law also provides for a special type of claim called a shareholder derivative action, which allows a shareholder to sue a third party on behalf of the business in which they own shares, in circumstances where the board is refusing to initiate proceedings. This might occur, for example, when the board is attempting to protect one of its corporate officers from legal liability.

Commercial Lease Disputes

Many businesses rent their premises as opposed to owning them. For this reason, commercial lease disputes are commonplace. Non-payment of rent, unauthorized construction, breach of option clauses, and disputes over lease renewal are all types of commercial lease disputes frequently dealt with by business litigation attorneys. If your business is facing a commercial lease dispute, it is imperative that you seek legal assistance quickly to have it resolved: the last thing you want is to end up without a premises from which to conduct your operations.

Intellectual Property Disputes

Among the most complex kinds of disputes that business litigation attorneys must deal with are those concerning theft or misuse of intellectual property. If a business uses the designs, inventions, trademarks or logos of your business without authorization, you will need to act quickly to assert your intellectual property rights and protect your business’s profits, market share and reputation. Trademark and copyright infringement is an especially common type of intellectual property dispute that lawyers deal with.

Approaches To Resolving Business Disputes

An experienced business litigation attorney will have an arsenal of dispute resolution strategies which they will draw on as they steer your business towards a favorable outcome. Not all business disputes end up in court: in fact, many of the best lawyers pride themselves not on the number of cases they’ve won, but on the number of quick and favorable settlements they’ve managed to negotiate for their clients.

Sometimes, attorneys recommend that the parties to the dispute first attempt mediation. This is an appropriate course of action when it would be to the parties’ advantage to attempt to salvage the business relationship and reach a resolution amicably. For this reason, mediation is often used to resolve partnership disputes.

Your attorney may also recommend that the dispute be resolved by another alternative dispute resolution process: arbitration. Arbitration allows the dispute to be resolved confidentially, and there are no case records or legal filings available to the public. It also allows the parties to appoint an arbitration panel with expertise in the subject matter of the dispute. Arbitration proceedings are usually much quicker than court proceedings and are less formal – for this reason, they also tend to be less expensive, notwithstanding that the parties are responsible for the arbitrators’ fees.