Practice Areas
San Diego Business Torts Attorney
San Diego, California, Business Torts Attorneys
Books and movies have long used the phrase, “it’s just business” to indicate that things can get pretty rough in the commercial world. Competition, not cooperation, is the business byword, and the competition for business and profits is not always conducted on a friendly basis.
Nevertheless, there are limits. The competition has to be conducted within the boundaries of acceptable conduct that society and California law lay down for all of us. That requirement is what lies behind the concept of the “business tort.” Simply put, a business tort is a violation of those rules of conduct which is serious enough for society to allow the business that has been the victim of bad behavior to sue to recover damages suffered as a result of the bad conduct.
What sets business torts apart from “regular” torts is that they involve injuries to the victim’s business. The harm is typically to the business’s intangible rights and assets: interference with its business relationships, with its basic right to compete with other businesses by requiring that they follow the same rules, or with any other right that businesses possess.
Breach of Fiduciary Duty
Breach of fiduciary duty is a very common claim in the business world. It’s a broad category involving any claim that a person in a position of high trust—officers, directors, brokers, agents and so on—breached their obligation to act in the interests of the business and to act competently. These are difficult cases, requiring intimate knowledge of:
- The duties ordinarily performed by the fiduciary
- The value of these duties to the business
- The context and atmosphere in which the duties are performed
- The temptations that the fiduciaries encounter in that context
- The kinds of evidence that indicates a breach of contact or of the duty
Interference with Contract or Business Relationship
There are many ways that one business can interfere with the legitimate interests of another business. Interference may involve a business contract or other business relationship, and may be with the victim business’s relationship with existing customers, prospective customers, employees or others.
The claims sound very similar, but an experiences business tort attorney knows that there are very important differences in the evidence that has to be gathered and presented, and in the kinds of harm that the victim suffers from the interference. It can be very tricky, for example, to establish that the victim had a realistic expectation of an economically beneficial relationship with someone that was not, at the time of the claimed tort, actually doing business with the victim.
Other Typical Business Torts
Other typical business torts include unfair competition and fraud of various kinds.
Unfair competition is a broad category that generally encompasses infringements of intellectual property rights, improper pricing practices and a host of other conduct.
Business fraud may involve any number of subjects, and typically consists of misrepresentations. The most common type of business fraud is misrepresentation which is intended to, and does, induce the victim to act to its detriment because of false statements.
Business fraud may also be more overt, approaching, or even including, criminal behavior, such as embezzlement and forgery. The potential types of business fraud are limited only by the imagination of the people who commit the fraud.
Legal Assistance in Southern California Business Tort Actions
Business tort cases tend to be very complex. It takes experience and detailed knowledge of the businesses involved to bring them to a successful conclusion, experience you’ll find at San Diego’s Boyd Law Firm. Our success rate at Boyd Law is superior. Many of our new clients come to us on the recommendation of old clients, and our reputation in the business and legal community speaks for itself. If you’re staying up at night worrying about what’s going to happen to your business, contact the Boyd Law Firm today for a free consultation. We’ll keep you out of court whenever possible, and fight to the end in court whenever necessary.
