Skip to content
Contact

Corporate & Commercial Litigation

Business disputes require practical advice, strategic thinking, and effective advocacy. We represent companies, shareholders, business owners, and professionals in a wide range of corporate and commercial disputes throughout Victoria and British Columbia.

Our practice includes shareholder and partnership disputes, breaches of contract, business torts, fiduciary duty claims, and disputes arising from commercial transactions. We work to resolve matters efficiently through negotiation or alternative dispute resolution whenever possible, while remaining prepared to protect our clients’ interests in court or arbitration when necessary.

By combining strong litigation experience with a practical understanding of business, we help clients achieve solutions that minimize risk, control costs, and support their long-term commercial objectives. We strive for solutions that free our clients to grow their businesses or to live their lives with less stress and more money. If their troubles are with family or friends, we can strive for solutions that restore relationships.

Oppression claims and derivative actions

  • We have advocated for shareholders whose rights have been violated by directors or other shareholders.
  • We were lead counsel in a successful mediation within an arbitration to resolve a dispute over multiple locations of a well-known retailer.
  • We filed petitions for relief from oppression and for leave to start derivative actions.

Corporate governance

  • Meetings of directors and shareholders: We have advised directors on how to meet their legal duties, how to conduct meetings, and how to avoid conflicts of interest. We have prepared the notices and agendas for contentious meetings and have guided clients through the conduct of the meetings. We have helped shareholders’ exercise their rights to dissent.
  • We have advised boards of directors on the legal test for conflicts of interest under the legislation and articles of incorporation. We have acted for corporations wishing to remove directors for incompetence and breaches of duty.

Share and asset purchases and sales

  • We have run lawsuits over the purchase of shares and assets.
  • We have run a lawsuit that claims ownership of shares in a closely-held and very successful company based on the law of proprietary estoppel and unjust enrichment.
  • We have run claims over breaches to the shareholders agreement, and we have negotiated buy-outs of shareholders.
  • We have run a lawsuit over the sale of a business, involving thousands of assets and a disputed purchase price, and we assembled thousands of records on the assets and on accounting irregularities.

Audrey ran a successful trial that resulted in order for over $1.2 to be paid to the clients. It concerned the distribution of proceeds from the sale of property upon which a business was run by the parties, an accounting relating to the property and business, and a breach of a trust concerning property.