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For many commercial ventures — both great and small — business is a multi-state and, often, multinational venture. Even if your company doesn’t directly conduct business activities in a given state, that doesn’t automatically mean that you might not find yourself in a position where you need to sue in that state. When that state is Georgia, make sure you act swiftly to retain a skilled Atlanta commercial litigation lawyer to help you defeat efforts by the defense to derail that lawsuit.

In Georgia, as in other states, there is something known as a “Certificate of Authority to Transact Business” that shows that your non-Georgia business entity is authorized by the Secretary of State to do business in this state.

Not getting a certificate comes with various risks, which include potentially barring your business from pursuing a commercial litigation action in the Georgia courts. That is only true, though, if your business’s activity in the Peach State exceeds a certain minimum threshold.

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If you have a business in Georgia, you have likely been sued or eventually will be sued. If you receive a complaint that alleges that you violated racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations (RICO) laws, it may be easy to say… that is completely ridiculous! Indeed, it may well be. However, even if you fervently believe the plaintiff’s arguments are unserious, this lawsuit is something that you should treat with the utmost seriousness. That starts with getting in touch with an experienced Georgia civil RICO lawyer.

There are a couple of very big reasons why you should be extremely proactive after you’ve been sued in a RICO case, even if the claim seems blatantly inadequate. First, any claim existing against your business is something that can cost you money, so the sooner it is dispatched, the better for your business. Secondly, if you can demonstrate the depth of the claim’s facial insufficiency to the court, you may have open an opportunity to recover compensation of your own through an award of sanctions.

As to how that’s done, a recent RICO case from here in North Georgia makes for a good illustration. The plaintiff, R.W., was a Georgia real estate developer. In 2010, his bank approached him about restructuring some of his commercial loans. The developer agreed to the plan, which called for him to pledge his and his mother’s homes as collateral. Eight months later, the bank foreclosed on both homes.

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Commercial contracts allow you to include a variety of clauses, including one that dictates where disputes will be litigated. Even if you agreed to this kind of forum selection clause, you may still desire to litigate your case somewhere other than the forum required in your contract. If that’s you, it is important to recognize that you potentially may be able to get this done. Successfully doing this requires many things, and those things often include representation from a skilled Atlanta commercial contracts lawyer.

One way you can succeed in litigating outside the forum required by your contract is if the other side waives its right to demand enforcement of the forum selection clause.

So, what does this kind of waiver look like? A recent breach of contract case in federal court makes a good illustration. The dispute pitted a generator manufacturer and distributor against the Pennsylvania software developer and the California software installer it retained to create and install new software that the manufacturer needed.

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Signing an agreement to license your intellectual property is, not unlike signing a lease to rent your commercial real estate, something you enter into with high expectations. You’ve put in lots of work prior to the execution of that contract, and you expect the arrangement will be profitable for both sides. Of course, that doesn’t always happen. If your licensee has failed to pay you what you’re owed, it may be time to sue to collect that money and perhaps collect interest on top of it. When that becomes necessary, look to an experienced Atlanta commercial litigation attorney to help you get the most from your case.

A great many things in this world can be big business, including camouflage patterns. Indeed, one such designer, who had copyrighted an array of camo patterns, was able to make money by granting licenses to use its designs.

One licensee obtained a license agreement to put the patterns on its energy drink containers. Later on, the energy drink’s sales began to decline, and it fell behind on its royalty payments.

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The law of contracts allows entities to contract for many things. You can stipulate where disputes will be litigated, and you can declare what state’s laws should be used for resolving the arguments made in that litigation. When it comes time to negotiate and draft your next commercial contract, deciding on the venue and the law for resolving disputes will be among many vital considerations. Count on an experienced Atlanta commercial contracts lawyer to help you through every step from negotiation to litigation.

So, what happens if your commercial contract contains a venue selection clause but no choice of law provision? This contract dispute from the federal court in Atlanta offers a good illustration.

The parties were “a provider of consulting and sales services to educational institutions” and a provider “of data and analytics products and services to educational institutions.” The parties’ sales referral agreement said that the consulting firm “would act as the exclusive referrer for all of [the data analytics company’s] solicitation of business from the Houston Independent School District.”

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There are lots of ways that a knowledgeable Atlanta commercial litigation attorney can help your Georgia case. Some are things that you probably can identify readily, while others are less obvious. For example, what if a statute that impacts your case gets changed by the legislature while your lawsuit is going on? What happens then? You reasonably might not know, but rest assured that your experienced lawyer will, and will know how to use that change to your optimal benefit.

That’s exactly what happened in one breach of contract case from Savannah. A large manufacturer and supplier of industrial-use sulfuric acid sued the Tampa, Florida-based contractor it hired to renovate a storage tank at the supplier’s Savannah facility.

Allegedly, the Florida firm committed multiple errors, resulting in sulfuric acid leaking from the base of the tank. The Florida entity did its work from 2000 until January 2002. The supplier discovered the leak almost 10 years later, in July 2011. It filed suit in January 2012.

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When your company is sued for a business tort and/or breach of contract, you inevitably have many concerns. One of those is making sure there’s fairness, including fairness concerning the appointment of people who will make factual findings. If an improper person is named in your case, you can take action, but you must know how to take action. Having an experienced Atlanta commercial litigation attorney on your side can pay invaluable benefits to you and your business when it comes to ensuring that your process is a fair one.

Here in Georgia, the court rules allow a judge to appoint what’s called a “special master.” A special master, under the rules, may potentially address the parties’ pre-trial motions, conduct accountings, hold trial proceedings, and make recommended findings of fact, among other things. In other words, this master may have many jobs similar to things a judge might do.

The person holding this role should be free of conflicts. If that’s not the case, then you can potentially use the appointment of an improper master as the basis for a successful appeal, as a recent business tort case from South Georgia illustrates.

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When you have a commercial tenant who breaches its lease by improperly failing to make a repair, you’ve suffered financial harm in multiple ways. If you had to make the repair yourself, then you’ve suffered damages related to the cost of that repair. If the tenant’s failure to repair prevented you from leasing the space for a period of time, then you have lost rent while the property was under repair and unoccupied. On top of those things, you’re out the cost of the legal services your skillful attorney put in handling your case. If you’re a commercial landlord dealing with a failure-to-repair issue, it is important to ensure you have the right Atlanta commercial litigation attorney on your side to make certain that you don’t simply get an award of damages, but the full sum that you’re truly owed.

A commercial landlord in Athens found itself facing that kind of problem recently. The agreement it signed with the tenant said that the tenant was “responsible for making all repairs to all of the improvements on the premises, including the interior and exterior walls, roof, paved access, and parking areas.”

The lease also said that, if the landlord or the tenant sued “to enforce any covenant of this lease or for the breach of any covenant or condition,” then the two sides agreed “that the losing party shall pay to the prevailing party a reasonable attorney’s fee, which shall be fixed by the court, and court costs.”

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While Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act is modeled upon the federal RICO Act, it has some very clear differences that make Georgia’s RICO law more expansive than its federal counterpart. Even still, Georgia’s RICO law is limited in scope and, in many cases where it’s asserted as a claim, the alleged wrongdoing doesn’t fall within the narrow goalposts the law erects. If your ordinary business dispute has spun up into a claim of Georgia RICO violations by the other side, make sure you have an Atlanta RICO attorney experienced in handling these cases and in getting the claim dismissal or other positive outcome you need.

There are actually several ways that a civil claim under Georgia’s RICO law can come up short. For one thing, O.C.G.A. Section 16-14-4(a) requires that a RICO plaintiff prove that the defendant, by use of a “pattern of racketeering activity” or the proceeds from that activity, obtained “an interest in or control of any enterprise, real property, or personal property of any nature, including money.”

This last requirement was what felled one businessman’s recent RICO claim. That businessman, L.D., was someone who, according to some news reports, frequently acted as an intermediary between college football players and professional football agents.

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When you are locked in a dispute that leads to commercial litigation, there are several things that go into a successful outcome. Some of those are related to the facts of the dispute, but others are wholly unrelated to the factual matters. Instead, they turn solely on issues of the law and the rules of court procedure. Success, then, relies on not simply having a strong command of the facts of your case but also issues of law and procedure and how to use those to protect your business. This is one of the many reasons why it pays to rely on an experienced Atlanta commercial litigation attorney to handle your case.

If you have brought your lawsuit in state court, you have obviously done so because you and your legal team have concluded that the state court is the best place to litigate and to obtain a fair outcome that will fully compensate you for the harm you suffered. Given that, what you may have to overcome is an effort by the other side to move the case to federal court.

Fortunately, though, there are several potential ways to attack an effort by the other side to relocate your case from state court to federal court. As a recent breach of contract case illustrates, one of those relates to something called “diversity jurisdiction.”

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