Commercial Litigation generally involves any dispute arising in the course of business commerce. Our commercial litigation practice includes the following types of disputes:

• Business-to-business contractual disputes;
• Disputes arising from the solicitation of investment that finances a business (Securities litigation);
• Disputes regarding control of a business entity;
• Dissolution and winding up of a business entity;
• Breach of fiduciary duty claims;
• Common-law fraud, securities fraud, or consumer fraud claims;
• Contract and sales disputes arising under the Uniform Commercial Code;
• Unfair competition tort claims; and
• Antitrust claims.

Although we have appeared in bankruptcy courts and debt collection matters, our practice does not concentrate in these areas of commercial litigation. We also do not concentrate on corporate shareholder or merger/acquisition claims, RICO, banking and lending, credit, real estate or landlord-tenant claims, but can certainly help our clients obtain attorneys who do specialize in any of these types of commercial litigation claims.

Knowledge of the Industry at Issue

Although the legal skills involved in commercial litigation are fungible skills that carry over into any dispute, our experience has proven that a detailed familiarity with the particular industry context at issue is essential to understanding and prevailing on a claim. We therefore work closely with our clients to not only understand the nature of the dispute at hand, but also how that dispute fits into the bigger picture of our client's business.

"Bad Business" (short term) can be "Good Business" (long term)

Our commercial litigation practice also is admittedly unconventional in a somewhat counter-productive fashion. Whereas many commercial litigators end up extending a dispute through endless discovery and pre-trial litigation only to settle the case on the eve of trial for what all parties knew the case was worth in the first place, we seek to avoid the expense and cut to the chase. Although counter-productive from an individual case-by-case perspective, we find that there are enough disputes out there to keep us busy and that it serves our clients better (and encourages repeat business) if we appreciate the benefit to the client of resolving each case as soon as possible. We are of course fully prepared to take the fight to the other side if an early compromise is not possible, but we do not consider it a failure if we achieve a quick and efficient settlement of a claim before we get a chance to generate a proportionate amount of legal fees.

Strategy over Legality

Just as everything in business depends not so much on what you sell but how you sell it, everything in commercial litigation depends not only upon what claims you can develop, but how you approach the other side in trying to resolve dispute. Sometimes a shotgun blast might intimidate an opponent into submission, but more often this common approach only entrenches the opposition into a defensive posture that extends the dispute through years of discovery until the eve of trial. Our approach toward commercial litigation always emphasizes achieving a resolution to the dispute, not aggravating or complicating the dispute even further. Although there are differing degrees of selfishness and narcissism amongst business people, rarely do commercial disputes involve genuine issues of good vs. evil, where a moral difference in ethics makes a dispute irresolvable. Resolving such disputes often involves understanding the personalities and psychology of the dispute from the other side, in addition to rendering an objectively strong legal posture.