Before defining commercial litigation, one needs to understand first what civil litigation means. The most familiar cases of civil litigations are related to professional malpractice, labor cases, employment disputes, and contract disputes. These cases are usually between two individuals wherein one party called the plaintiff is requiring compensation or specific performance from the defendant, because of something wrong that has been done.
Not all civil litigations end up in court. Most attorneys are exerting efforts to settle out of court because trials are not only lengthy but also quite expensive. When civil litigation involves a business such as a corporation, the simple litigation now becomes commercial litigation. Some of its most common kinds are antitrust cases, intellectual property cases, contractual disputes, torts, construction cases, and class action lawsuits.
The main difference between commercial litigation and other types of litigation is simply the parties involved in the case. Due to the fact that businesses are involved in the litigation, the issues tackled are more complicated. In a sense, commercial litigations are complex civil litigations.
Commercial litigation attorneys are trained to handle these complicated cases and specialize in conducting the appropriate means to complete the settlement between entities. Naturally, this type of litigation is more costly. The services of experts such as fraud analysts or forensics are sometimes involved, hence the cost of the case is quite higher than typical civil litigation.
Antitrust cases are commercial litigations that are focused on allegations that the business practices of a company are not complying with regulations in competition. On the other hand, intellectual property litigation can include patent, copyright, or trademark infringement cases.
Class action lawsuits, also another form of commercial litigation, deals with a group of people who have a similar complaint against a company. There are also commercial cases that arise from employment and labor disputes between workers and the company they work for.
There are various kinds of commercial litigation and each of them needs to be handled with well-trained attorneys who are experienced in the same type of case. As civil litigations go, attorneys in commercial litigations also work for settling the dispute before the case reaches court for a trial.
While most of the time, an out-of-court settlement is sought by lawyers, the necessity to reach court can also arise hence the law firms then work into bringing the dispute into the trial. Whatever the direction of the commercial case may be, trained professionals are after getting the goal of their clients and what’s best in the current situation.
