In a 2017 survey, some 27 percent of respondents connected with companies revealed that there were at least 21 lawsuits lodged against their respective companies at least a year prior to the survey. Considering just how many these business lawsuits are, it’s not hard to imagine just how busy civil law attorneys must have been on that year alone. These attorneys handle a wide range of cases, including lawsuits concerning business, family, employment, finance, real estate, landlord/tenant, and immigration.
If you don’t want to be at the receiving end of a civil lawsuit, there are some things you must know about such as the most common types of business-related cases. Knowledge is power and your knowledge of these common commerce-related lawsuits could help you avoid committing them in the first place. Here are six common business lawsuits that you should know about:
- Breach of contract. Breach of contract is easily among the top business lawsuits out there, without a doubt. In the most basic explanation, this happens when any one of the contracting parties failed to adhere to any or several of the terms stipulated in a legally-binding business contract. This type of potential lawsuit is essentially a multi-pronged blunt instrument because a case can be initiated by a customer, an employee, a supplier, and a business partner. With such a number of possible sources of a lawsuit, you should definitely take your contracts seriously to avoid giving yourself a waking nightmare.
- Tort. Tort occurs when business owners failed to exercise caution in protecting their clients and employees against potential bodily harm while inside and immediately outside their vicinities. Some of the common examples of tort injuries are slip and fall and premises liability, which could both lead to a costly court case
- Discrimination and wrongful termination. These are two other business-related cases that every entrepreneur could face. Wrongful termination happens when an employee is fired from work due to race, sexual orientation, pregnancy, disability, religion, and other reasons that do not negatively affect their work performance. Customers could also fall victim to either of these situations when they were refused service or access to products on the basis of the things mentioned above.
- Workplace harassment. There have been case studies about workplace harassment over the decades and these cases illustrate just how employees are vulnerable to workplace harassment from fellow employees and their employers as well. Workplace harassment comes in the form of bullying, sexual advances and off-color remarks or jokes, and psychological or physical attacks.
- Product liability. A product liability lawsuit could stem from a defective or health hazardous product that a manufacturer may have knowingly or unknowingly sold to the public. Such a product may cause a serious and even simple bodily injury or ill effects on health so businesses involved in producing any product for public consumption should be very careful before selling anything if they’re not 100 percent certain about its safety.
- Intellectual property infringement. Any form of copying or unauthorized use of any person’s intellectual property (IP) should be enough to launch an IP lawsuit. If you’re launching a marketing campaign or any form of business promotion such as your logo or store design, you have to be sure that the materials you use belong to you and are 100 percent original. You can easily avoid this by hiring a reputable advertising or design professional to produce the marketing materials that you need to promote your business.
From these examples, it’s obvious that business-related lawsuits are easily preventable if the people running them know how they happen and how best to avoid them based on such knowledge. Just keep these pieces of information in mind and dodging a business lawsuit should be an easier thing to do.
