Commercial litigation is a form of legal action that takes place between two or more businesses or organizations. It differs from civil litigation because the parties involved are organizations, not individuals. Here is a guide to some of the main kinds of commercial litigation.
Trade Secret
Trade secrets and copyright litigation are used to protect valuable information held by businesses. Information is immensely valuable in business, and rival companies often use rather dirty tricks to get ahold of trade secrets. A great deal of commercial litigation is based on the protection of trade secrets and copyrighted products.
Tax Dispute
All businesses in the United States are required to pay taxes based on their incomings and activities. Business leaders naturally want to try and pay the smallest legally required amount of money in tax. This, however, can lead to some complex legal wranglings between a business and the state. Businesses involved in tax disputes usually need to make their financial incomings and outgoings available to prosecuting lawyers.
Antitrust
Antitrust laws were introduced to stop businesses from forming monopolies or cartels. Monopolies and cartels squash competition by merging with partner companies, fixing prices, and artificially impacting the state of a market. Monopoly men and cartel-influenced mergers were key reasons why the stock market crash of 1929 was so devastating.
Antitrust laws dictate how businesses can merge and collaborate in market alteration. These laws are complex enough to have provoked the development of a distinct field within commercial law.
Breach of Contract
Business-to-business contracts are immensely important, and the breaching of a contract between two businesses can end up causing a broad range of disasters. Most contracts contain clauses that lay out the rights of signees to seek reparations if a contract has been breached by a party. Cases where a contract has been broken – such as when a signee fails to provide a service – are usually very cut and dry. Things get a bit more complex when a contract is broken in a more abstract fashion – such as when a signee fails to provide an adequate service. In these cases, a competent solicitor such as Fleeson Going corporate litigation lawyer needs to be hired.
Product Liability
When one business sells a product to another business, it retains product liability, in many cases even though the product is being used by another party. Even the manufacturer of the parts that make up a product can be held responsible for a faulty product if their parts are found to have been the cause of a malfunction. Commercial litigation cases that rest on an assertion of product liability are undertaken for a company to gain financial reparations when their business has been affected by a malfunctioning product. If a consumer sues a business in a civil case after being hurt by a faulty product, the company that has been sued will often seek to gain reparations from the companies further down the manufacturing chain.
If you’d like to know more about commercial litigation be sure to check out Aandi Lawyers.