Business Litigation

Our Business Litigation Practice Group possesses the full range of capabilities required to meet the litigation needs of the firm's sophisticated business clients.

Specific areas of our business litigation practice include:

Contract & Business-Tort Disputes

Businesses conduct business through contractual relationships, and the competitive marketplace can be a rough-and-tumble world. Unfortunately, disputes sometimes arise. The attorneys in our Litigation Practice Group regularly assist the firm's clients in navigating the troubled waters of business and commercial litigation and have amassed many years of experience in litigating all manners of business and commercial disputes. They have participated in the federal and state courts at both the trial and appellate levels.

Intellectual Property Disputes

These days, businesses have a lot more to protect than just bricks and mortar. Information, ideas, and identifiers can be among a business' most valuable assets. Such items of "intellectual property" can take many forms, including patents, trade secrets, trademarks, service marks, trade names, and copyrighted materials. When our clients need to protect their intellectual property through litigation, the lawyers in our Litigation Practice Group have the know-how and experience to be advocate on their behalf.

Shareholder Disputes

Just as "the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry," shareholders in closely-held corporations, despite the oneness of purpose that brought them together in their enterprise, sometimes find themselves at odds, resulting in the eruption of disputes that can threaten the very existence of the enterprise. Corporate shareholders at times feel that management is not being sufficiently assertive in pursuing the corporation's rights, and shareholder derivative litigation can result. Shareholder disputes take many forms and our attorneys in our Litigation Practice Group represent our clients in handling shareholder disputes of all types.

Class Action Disputes

"Class action" is a phrase that strikes fear into the heart of many a business executive, as class-action litigation is frequently high-stakes, complex, protracted, and expensive. Consumer class-action lawsuits often carry the additional specter of multiple-damage and punitive-damage awards. With their experience, the attorneys in our Litigation Practice Group can help take the fear out of class-action litigation and advocate on your behalf.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)

Litigation in the courts, while time-honored and oftentimes the only way to achieve resolution of business disputes, is increasingly being recognized by many as cumbersome, slow, and expensive. Many a businessperson has lamented: "There must be a better way." Well, there are other ways to resolve many business disputes, and sometimes they are, indeed, better. While not exactly panaceas, processes such as early neutral evaluation, mediation, arbitration, summary jury trial, and summary bench trial which collectively have come to be known as "alternative dispute resolution" techniques or just "ADR" in many instances result in faster and cheaper resolution of disputes. The attorneys in our Litigation Practice Group are well versed in all ADR techniques and frequently represent clients in court-annexed ADR proceedings, as well as ADR efforts conducted through private ADR-sponsoring organizations, such as the American Arbitration Association, the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, JAMS, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.