This is the firm's principal area of practice, and the discipline that organises everything else it does. A dispute rarely announces itself as belonging to a single category of law. A disagreement between shareholders may carry within it a breach of contract, a question of criminal breach of trust, and a dispute over the valuation of an exit, all arising from the same set of facts, and all requiring resolution in some coordinated way. The firm's approach to litigation and dispute resolution is to treat the matter as a whole, rather than to parcel it out among separate practices that do not speak to one another.
Within this practice, the firm's work is concentrated in three connected areas: disputes within business organizations, juristic persons, partnerships, and companies; trade and commercial disputes arising between businesses; and criminal matters that arise in connection with either. Each is addressed in more detail on its own terms, but none is treated as separate from the others when a single client's matter touches more than one.
The firm's method does not distinguish, at the outset, between a matter destined for negotiation and one destined for trial. Every matter is assessed on the same footing: the facts are established, the applicable law is identified with precision, and the available means of resolution, negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or litigation before the courts, are considered on their merits rather than by default. Where a matter can be resolved without recourse to the courts, it is. Where it cannot, it is prepared to the same standard the firm would apply if it expected, from the first day, to see the matter through to judgment.
Litigation & Dispute Resolution
Disputes among the owners and managers of a business do not always remain confined to civil claims. Where the conduct in question involves the misappropriation of company assets, the fraudulent inducement of a partner into an investment, or the deliberate concealment of a director's dealings from the shareholders he owes a duty to, the matter may give rise to criminal liability alongside or in place of a civil claim. The line between the two is not always evident at the outset, and the same set of facts may support both.
The firm represents clients in criminal proceedings arising from this context, including:
Breach of trust and misappropriation of company or partnership assets by a director, officer, or managing partner
Fraud committed against a company by its own management, or against shareholders or partners in the course of an investment or transaction
Forgery and use of forged documents in connection with corporate records, resolutions, or financial statements
Offences arising under the Public Limited Companies Act or Civil and Commercial Code concerning the conduct of directors and officers
Allegations of corruption or misconduct connected to a business relationship, including matters investigated by the Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission and prosecuted before the criminal courts
These matters demand a different discipline from an ordinary criminal defence: they require the same command of corporate and commercial fact patterns that underlies the firm's principal civil practice, applied to a proceeding where the burden of proof, the standard of evidence, and the consequences of an adverse finding are of a different order. The firm represents both those accused of such offences and those complainants seeking to establish them, depending on the position its client occupies in the underlying business dispute.
Intellectual Property Law
A company's trademarks, trade secrets, and proprietary materials are frequently at the centre of the disputes the firm handles as its principal practice, a departing partner who takes client relationships and confidential pricing data with him, a former director who registers the company's mark in his own name, a joint venture that dissolves amid disagreement over who owns the brand the parties built together. In matters of this kind, the intellectual property question cannot be separated from the underlying dispute over ownership and control.
The firm advises on and represents clients in intellectual property disputes connected to a broader business or ownership matter, including:
Trademark disputes arising from a business breakup, including registration in bad faith by a former partner, director, or employee
Misappropriation of trade secrets, client data, or confidential business information by a departing partner or officer
Disputes over the ownership of intellectual property created in the course of a joint venture or partnership
Copyright disputes connected to materials developed for, or owned by, the business organization in question
The firm does not maintain a general intellectual property registration or prosecution practice. Its involvement in IP matters is confined to those that arise in connection with, or as a consequence of, a dispute within the business organizations it is principally engaged to advise on.
Criminal Matters
Commercial relationships are built on an expectation of performance that goods will be delivered as specified, that payment will follow on agreed terms, that a distributor or agent will act within the bounds of its mandate. When that expectation breaks down, the resulting dispute rarely turns on a single clause in isolation. It typically requires a careful reconstruction of the parties' course of dealing: what was agreed, what was represented, what was relied upon, and where the departure from that understanding occurred.
The firm advises on and represents clients in disputes of this nature, including:
Breach of contract and non-performance of commercial agreements, including disputes over the interpretation of contractual terms
Disputes concerning pricing, delivery, quality, or other conditions of trade between commercial parties
Conflicts arising under distribution, agency, and supply arrangements, including disputes over the scope of an agent's or distributor's authority
Disagreements between joint venture partners in the course of executing a commercial undertaking, distinct from disputes over the joint venture entity's internal governance
Claims for damages, specific performance, or termination arising from a counterparty's failure to perform
Trade disputes rarely arise in isolation from the business organizations that are party to them. A dispute over a supply contract, for instance, may be inseparable from a disagreement between the shareholders of the company that entered into it. For this reason, the firm approaches trade and commercial disputes in connection with its principal practice, disputes within business organizations, juristic persons, partnerships, and companies, rather than as a matter treated independently of the ownership or governance context in which it arises.
Where a commercial dispute admits of resolution short of litigation, the firm represents clients in negotiation or mediation. Where it does not, the matter is prepared and advanced through the courts, on the same standard of preparation the firm applies to every matter it undertakes.
Corporate Governance & Entity Structuring
Most of the disputes the firm is engaged to resolve could, in hindsight, be traced to a decision made at the founding of the business, a shareholders' agreement that left the terms of an exit unaddressed, a joint venture entered into without a mechanism for resolving deadlock, a family enterprise incorporated without any provision for what happens on the death or departure of a founder. The firm's litigation experience informs its advisory work in the other direction: having represented clients through disputes of this nature, the firm is positioned to advise on structures designed, from the outset, to anticipate and limit them.
The firm advises on:
Selection of entity type and structure, having regard to the ownership, control, and succession arrangements the founders intend
Shareholders' agreements, addressing matters such as the exercise of majority and minority rights, deadlock resolution, and the valuation and terms of an exit
Joint venture agreements, including the allocation of management authority and the mechanism for resolving disagreement between venture partners
Corporate governance instruments, including the scope of directors' and officers' authority and the procedures for corporate resolutions
Partnership agreements, including the terms governing profit-sharing, admission of new partners, and dissolution
This work is undertaken in connection with the firm's principal practice rather than as a conventional corporate services offering. Its purpose is to give effect, in the governing documents themselves, to an understanding of where disputes of this kind typically originate, an understanding drawn from the firm's experience litigating them once they arise.
Trade & Commercial
OUR SERVICES
A company rarely becomes insolvent in a vacuum. By the time a business reaches the point of bankruptcy or restructuring, the dispute that precipitated it, a shareholder deadlock that paralysed decision-making, a director's mismanagement or breach of duty, a partner's diversion of funds, has often already been underway for some time, and the insolvency proceeding becomes the forum in which that underlying dispute is finally addressed. Creditors, minority shareholders, and former partners frequently find that their claims against the company, and their claims against the individuals who ran it, must be pursued together.
The firm advises on and represents clients in matters including:
Petitions for bankruptcy or business reorganisation, and disputes over the grounds on which they are brought
Claims by creditors, including disputes over the ranking and validity of claims in a reorganisation or liquidation
Claims against directors or managing partners for mismanagement, breach of duty, or wrongful trading preceding the company's insolvency
Disputes among shareholders or partners over the distribution of remaining assets, or over responsibility for the company's financial position
Recovery of assets improperly transferred, concealed, or diverted prior to insolvency
As with the firm's other related work, bankruptcy and insolvency matters are approached in connection with the firm's principal practice, on the view that the financial collapse of a business organization is, in most cases, downstream of a dispute over its ownership or governance rather than a matter properly considered apart from it.
Bankruptcy and Insolvency
Our Approach
The firm does not begin a matter by asking how it will be resolved. That question is answered later, once the facts are established and the available options are clear. What the firm asks at the outset is different: what happened, in what order, and what the governing documents and the law say about it. Everything that follows, negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or trial, is a consequence of that groundwork, not a starting assumption.
Establishing the facts. The firm begins with a detailed review of the governing documents, correspondence, financial records, and other evidence available to the client, and identifies at an early stage what further evidence will be required.
Identifying the applicable law. Disputes of the kind the firm handles rarely turn on a single provision. The relevant law is drawn from the Civil and Commercial Code, the Public Limited Companies Act, and the governing documents of the entity in question, read together against the facts as established.
Assessing the available means of resolution. Once the facts and the law are settled, the firm advises the client on the realistic range of outcomes and the means by which they may be reached, direct negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or proceedings before the courts, without preference for one over another except as the matter warrants.
Preparing the matter. Whichever course is taken, the matter is prepared as though it will be tried: witness accounts are recorded while memory is reliable, documentary evidence is organised and indexed, and the legal argument is drafted before it is required, not after.
Advancing the matter to its conclusion. Where a matter proceeds to court, the firm conducts the litigation through trial, any subsequent appeal, and the enforcement of judgment. Where it is resolved earlier, the firm's involvement concludes only once the terms of that resolution are properly documented and given legal effect.
