Various different grounds can give rise to Business disputes in Virginia. Often, businesses will disagree over the exact meaning of terms found in contracts or prior oral agreements. Billing issues and property matters also commonly form grounds for disagreements between businesses.
What to Do in a Business Dispute?
If you are involved in a business dispute in Alexandria, Virginia you should first review any relevant documents, including past and current contracts. These documents may contain clauses that dictate how and where you should handle a dispute. Not all contracts have dispute resolution clauses, of course, and sometimes neither business has any documents relevant to the dispute at all. If that is the case, a court may be needed to resolve the dispute. Virginia courts may use legal principles to determine the outcome when the parties have not agreed beforehand about how to handle a dispute. In so doing, they look carefully to a particular case to discover the best resolution for all involved. Each state has different business laws about dispute resolution and contract law. An Attorney practicing in Alexandria can help you handle your dispute in accordance with the applicable Virginia laws. Negotiations may also proceed more smoothly when an attorney is consulted, which may even lead to a resolution outside of court.
Alternative Dispute Resolution
Sometimes contracts themselves require that disputes under them be resolved outside of court. Methods of conflict resolution of this type are called Alternative Dispute Resolution or ADR. ADR includes Mediation, Arbitration and sometimes a combination of the two. All forms of ADR are designed to reach the same decision a court would have, without needing to actually go to court. They carry their own sets of procedures and protocols, and they often involve a neutral third party listening to both sides of a dispute and making a determination based on local law. If ADR is to be used in resolving your dispute, an attorney in Alexandria specialized with ADR procedures can help you develop your case.