Many 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 Petersburg, 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. If there are no relevant documents, or the contracts do not have resolution clauses, then the dispute may need to be taken to court. Where the parties have not agreed beforehand about how to handle disputes, legal principles have been designed to determine the resolution. When they are called upon, Virginia courts try to discover the best resolution by looking to the facts of the particular situation presented. Each state has different business laws about dispute resolution and contract law. An Attorney practicing in Petersburg 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

Contracts often have clauses requiring that a dispute be handled outside of court. This is called Alternative Dispute Resolution or ADR, and it includes Mediation and Arbitration among others. ADR makes going to court unnecessary, because it is designed to reach the same result that a court would have. Still, some methods of ADR entail their own formal procedures, most enlisting a third party to decide a dispute based on local law just as a judge would do. In Petersburg, Attorneys specialized in ADR can help if your business dispute is to be resolved out of court.