Running a business involves a wide range of legal issues. You need a competent lawyer if your business gets involved in a lawsuit.
Business litigation attorneys manage large and small legal concerns that businesses deal with daily. It includes building robust contracts, ensuring regulatory compliance, and safeguarding intellectual property.
Partnership Disputes
A business litigation attorney can help a client defend against lawsuits filed by customers, competitors, and others that allege the company engaged in a wrongful activity like defective consumer products or illegal sales practices. A lawyer can also assist with defense against malpractice claims involving individual professionals such as doctors and lawyers.
Some partnerships end in dispute, and a seasoned business litigation attorney can help resolve these conflicts in a way that is in the best interests of all partners involved. Many of these disputes can be resolved without legal action through mediation or arbitration, which involves a neutral third party that steers parties to a settlement or makes a legal judgment. Rifts that linger can harm your business.
Contract Disputes
Contracts are the foundation of nearly all significant business dealings and relationships. These legally binding documents can dramatically affect a company’s liability, whether for the sale of goods, employment agreements, vendor contracts, real estate construction projects, or non-compete agreements.
Business litigation attorneys are skilled at reviewing, interpreting, and defending all business contracts. They often engage in settlement negotiations, depositions, and courtroom trials for their clients.
Contract disputes often involve disagreements over the interpretation of contract terms. These can be as simple as a language misunderstanding or as complex as arguing over the appropriate compensation for services rendered. In these cases, a court might award damages or equitable remedies. Regardless, it can be devastating to a business to resort to legal proceedings.
Corporate Transactions
As businesses grow, they often require legal advice to guide them through various corporate transactions. It includes everything from purchasing or selling assets to mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations. Access to best-practice-based legal counsel can be the difference between astronomical success and catastrophic failure in business.
A business litigation lawyer can help legal advise all transactions, including drafting and negotiating contracts and agreements. It also includes reviewing international transactions involving local markets and regulations. If a corporation dissolves, a lawyer can assist with liquidation, ensuring that creditors and shareholders receive the fair market value of their shares and assets.
Fraudulent Conveyances
Litigating a dispute can be costly, pulling a business’s resources away from its core operations. An experienced attorney can help resolve disputes quickly and effectively to limit financial costs.
Intellectual property is a significant focus for many businesses and can be subject to infringement claims. A lawyer can review contracts and other agreements to ensure a business gets all the rights it needs.
Fraudulent conveyance claims are based on the theory that debtors transfer assets intending to defraud creditors. Under the law, there are two types of fraudulent conveyance claims: actual fraud and constructive fraud. A trustee is limited to a two-year look-back period for setting aside transfers under these theories unless there is collusion or a special relationship with the transferee.
Breach of Fiduciary Duty
Family members can run into legal disputes when involved in a business. These disputes can involve issues like breach of fiduciary duty. Fiduciary duties are responsibilities that people assume when they have a special relationship of trust with someone else. Such relationships include an employer and employee, attorney and client, or trustee and beneficiary.
When someone breaches their fiduciary duty, they compensate the victim for their losses. However, proving that someone’s breach of fiduciary duty has harmed you can be difficult. Four main elements must be established: duty, breach, damages, and causation.
A skilled business litigation lawyer can help you understand your potential liability in a case like this and protect you against any false claims from opposing parties.
