As a business lawsuit protection attorney, the most common disputes that I see arise between business owners are contract disputes between service providers or contractors and employees, and ownership issues with intellectual property. So some examples of disputes that arise that I’ve dealt with prior to getting to litigation. One would be, there was an online magazine that was being started by two business partners. Before they set up their entity, they had thought about the concepts. The name for the business, everything they wanted to do. When they set up their company, there was nothing evidencing who’s going to be owning any of the intellectual property. Even the trademark, the process, or the idea.
After a few months, one of the owners wanted to do her own thing. She wasn’t completely crazy about the concept or the direction they were going in. She wanted to do her own thing. That caused a very big problem, and my client didn’t have a lot of leverage. So it was a process that was a lot more difficult and time consuming than it should have been. Because they didn’t have the proper agreements in place to evidence ownership of everything that was done with their business.
So another example of what can happen without business lawsuit protection: there was this business owner who had an employee who was there for like a month. And they wanted to let her go because she wasn’t really performing up to task. They had a really bad, poorly drafted employment handbook in place. They didn’t even follow the protocols within that employment handbook and what employment law dictates that you should follow in these situations.
So when he sits her down to tell her that he was going to let her go and the reason why, she knew something was up. She brings up the fact that she found out she was pregnant. And she had a doctor’s appointment in the next couple days. He knew that was going to be an issue, so he let her go, but he gave her a severance package. He offers her the check and the agreement. She doesn’t want to sign the agreement, but he gives her the check anyway. Within a week, there was a discrimination claim against him that said she was fired because she was pregnant. It wasn’t true, but he left himself open to that. And now he had to hire an attorney to handle that litigation, which cost him a lot of money.
Business Lawsuit Protection: How We Can Help
The thing that all business owners should take away from these examples of business lawsuit protection that I’m giving them is that if you spend the money in the beginning to do things right, put the proper protocols in place, analyze the risk, have the proper agreements in place, you will avoid, or at least minimize, the risk that you could face with lawsuits, with conflicts that will arise, and more than likely, you will at least give yourself a way to deal with it when those conflicts arise, and hopefully avoiding a very costly and lengthy litigation process. We can help our clients analyze the risks associated with their business and make a plan that will help them minimize such risks and protect their interests. We provide our clients with a basic audit that can help identify some of the biggest issues that need to be addressed.