Kessler Collins® - Commercial Litigation
Our litigation practice emphasizes developing litigation strategies to achieve our client’s desired goals. We represent clients, both large and small, in both state and federal courts, throughout Texas and the United States. We represent diverse clients across a wide spectrum of business disputes, including antitrust, contract disputes, financial-institution disputes, complex business torts, employment issues (including non-competition covenants), real property (including commercial landlord-tenant), oil and gas, partnership and corporate governance disputes, director and officer liability, tortious interference, securities and investments, products liability, trade secrets, and collections.
We have extensive experience representing clients in arbitration under both the rules of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the American Arbitration Association throughout the United States. Our experience includes representing clients in cases involving customer complaints against broker-dealers, business disputes, and employment issues representing both companies and individuals with arbitration agreements in their contracts. We also assist clients in drafting, reviewing, and interpreting arbitration clauses in contracts and employment agreements.
Mediation has become routine in all litigation. We work with clients with skill and dedication in every case referred to mediation to develop negotiation strategies to obtain the best result at the negotiating table.
Clients sometimes confuse mediation with arbitration. Mediation is a non-binding settlement conference while arbitration provides access to a private “judicial” system where decisions are binding and basically non-appealable. The decision to invoke arbitration is typically made well before any dispute exists since the obligation to arbitrate arises out of a contractual agreement. Arbitration has pros and cons that should be thoroughly discussed with counsel and understood before entering into any agreement to arbitrate. Once that decision is made you should be prepared for a much different experience than you will receive from our court system. Because of the limited nature of the judicial review of arbitration decisions having counsel experienced in arbitration is critical. We have represented clients in numerous arbitration proceedings before the American Arbitration Association, JAMS, and FINRA Dispute Resolution. We have expertise in the procedural rules and arbitrator selection processes of these primary arbitration organizations. While the forum may be different from typical litigation our goal is the same to win.