Commercial Litigation

What is commercial litigation?

Litigation is the process of taking legal action. It is often split into two categories, civil and commercial. Whilst civil litigation involves disputes between people, commercial litigation covers all disputes where this is a corporate involvement between businesses and companies.

Examples of commercial litigation

Commercial litigation is wide ranging, covering a variety of business disputes. One of the best ways to understand commercial litigation is to understand the sort of cases that have been filed previously. These are the 3 most common:

• Contract breaches

  Contacts are being drawn up between businesses on a daily basis. If there is a breach in contract that can't be resolved, then the innocent party may turn to commercial litigation. Breaches include: where there is a failure to deliver goods, when a payment is not made or isn't made on time, when the service delivered is not up to standard and many more.

• Disputed partnership agreements

  Partners in businesses fall out. It happens but sometimes it gets messy. These disputes usually come about when a partner of the business leaves and there are disagreements over how the assets should be split. For example, entitlement over branding and other intellectual property, customer data and pay outs.

• Director and shareholder disputes

  Director and Shareholder disputes can be really damaging for the business. They usually centre around how finances are split or conflicts of interest between members. Extreme cases can include fraud against the business.

Other commercial litigation cases could include: professional negligence, IT disputes, injunctions, civil fraud, intellectual property disputes.

Why you need legal support for commercial litigation

In an increasingly globalised world, commercial litigation claims are becoming more complex. They are becoming far harder for businesses to deal with without legal support. Here's why:

1. A strong case will only get you so far. It is important for your case to be properly strategised as your opposition will likely also be employing a legal team to preside over the case who will be doing their research on you.
2. Lots of information needs to be gathered to present a case, including legal documents and witnesses. Gathering this information requires a dedicated and experienced management team.
3. Commercial litigation cases are time consuming. They take a long time for a resolution to be made, it can often be months. Whilst all this is happening, it's taking you away from your day-to-day business.
4. Individual claims can get expensive. As claims often take a number of months to be resolved, they tend to get quite expensive. Without professional advice and a strategy from the very start of a commercial litigation claim, things could really rack up
5. The stakes are high. Win the claim and you could finally get the service you paid for, get a refund and a one up on your competitor. Lose and highly confidential documents used in the claim could be made public, as well as your reputation taking a battering.

How we can help you

At Spencers Solicitors, we are here to help protect you and your business. We are here to support you with:

• Managing your relationships and agreements with other organisations and third parties
• Managing directors, shareholders and employee relationships
• Protecting business assets
• Protecting financial position

Our firm is based in Chesterfield, Derbyshire and we help commercial litigation clients across the UK. Get in touch today - send an enquiry or call us on 08000 93 00 94.