Commercial Civil Litigation

Commercial civil litigation is the process of taking legal action to resolve private, non-criminal disputes between parties over money, property, promises, expectations, rights and duties in a business context.

Commercial civil litigation often occurs in the public courts with the parties’ disputes being decided at a trial.

But, in fact, most commercial civil litigation involves pre-trial activities.  For example:

  • Reviewing contracts and party communications
  • Drafting lawsuits
  • Conducting legal research in aid of a lawsuit, or to dismiss it
  • Filing procedural motions
  • Making written legal arguments and presenting them in court
  • Serving discovery requests
  • Responding or objecting to discovery requests
  • Issuing, or responding to, subpoenas
  • Taking, or defending, depositions

Attorney Isaac Post has extensive experience litigating, and trying, complex commercial cases.  He is admitted to practice law in the state courts of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the District of Columbia and at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Types of Disputes and Examples

Companies or individuals may find themselves in a commercial-type dispute involving differing types of problems, such as:

  • contract disputes, especially breaches of contract, including employment contracts
  • real property or intellectual property disputes
  • agency disputes, such as breaches of fiduciary duty
  • equity and equitable remedies, such as declaratory judgments, unjust enrichment, quantum meruit and injunctive relief
  • statutory liens, such as mechanic’s liens;
  • intentional torts, such as conversion, defamation, intentional interference with a contract or business expectancy, and fraud
  • unintentional torts such as negligence, including the professional negligence of a lawyer

Alternative Dispute Resolution

There are alternative methods of resolving disputes besides courts.  For example, sometimes contracts require that a dispute be resolved via arbitration, a private, and less formal process in which the parties agree to abide by the final decision of a neutral third-party, often a retired judge.

Less formal still is mediation, where a neutral third-party helps the disputants reach an agreed resolution.

In addition to trial work, attorney Isaac Post has significant experience resolving disputes through arbitration and mediation.