Chicago Business Litigation Lawyers

The team at Loftus & Eisenberg are reputable business litigation lawyers fighting for their clients’ rights in Chicago and across the United States.

Commercial Litigation

Breach of Contract

We represent individuals and businesses in contract disputes in all areas of business and for businesses of all sizes. Typically, a breach of contract occurs when a party fails to perform under the terms of the contract.

Shareholder and LLC Disputes

When a business or its owner has a dispute with a business partner, it is important that the business and its owners obtain legal representation to protect their interests. It is also recommended that the business requires separate representation from the owner to protect its interest. We handle all aspects of shareholder, LLC member and partnership disputes defense and prosecution of claims involving:

• Breach of fiduciary duty
• Conflicts of interest and self-dealing
• Shareholder derivative actions
• Minority shareholder, LLC and partnership rights
• Excessive management compensation
• Shareholder oppression claims due to forced or unfair buy-out agreements and fair value calculations
• Failure to pay dividends or distributions
• Failure to pay earned wages or sales commissions
• Deadlocks and freeze-out disputes
• Appraisal rights

Business Torts

Many social wrongs arise not because of an express agreement but because of certain kinds of interactions. Business torts are often complex and arise out of a commercial relationship. They can result in tangible financial harm, as well as intangible harm to goodwill, reputation, and economic interests. Some common business torts include fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, deceptive business practices, trade libel, defamation, and tortious interference with a contract.

Franchise Litigation

Franchises are a form of complex business relationship regulated by both contract and statute. All too often franchisors over promise and underdeliver which leads to fraud and breach of contract claims.

Intellectual Property

We also provide representation in litigation involving intellectual property. These are intangible rights like copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and publicity rights. They are in many cases the most valuable assets of a business, and often both federal and state laws protect a holder of an intellectual property right.

Real Estate Litigation

Loftus & Eisenberg, Ltd. handles litigation surrounding real estate transactions including: disputes over brokerage commissions, commercial leases, development of contracts and contracts including options to purchase.

Sales Commission Claims

Many businesses motivate their salespeople through commissions, where salespeople will collect a percentage of their sales or the business’ profits as part of their compensation, and they make more money if they successfully make more sales. However, some salespeople are not actually paid commissions that are owed, or they may be paid less than what they are owed.

Construction Litigation

Just as litigation over contract disputes demands knowledge of the area’s legal nuances, litigation over construction requires attorneys who understand the rules and regulations surrounding agreements, ownership structure, financing, and secured transactions. These laws relate not only to contractors and property owners but also to other parties in a project such as subcontractors.

Investment Litigation

Securities Litigation

Our Chicago investment fraud lawyers have litigated some of the most complex and cutting-edge securities disputes coast to coast and made the law on cryptocurrency.

Recent exposure of the problems on Wall Street and with the securities industry has resulted in many people taking a closer look at what their brokers do. Securities disputes are increasingly common throughout the U.S. In many cases, they are resolved through mediation or arbitration.

EB-5 Investment Fraud

Immigration fraud is the fastest growing area of our practice. EB-5 investments frequently are made in franchises or other small businesses. We are uniquely experienced in unwinding these forms of loosely regulated private investments. We can provide our EB-5 investment fraud clients comprehensive representation to pursue every avenue for recovery of their investment.

ERISA Investment Fraud

Employees and retirees are entitled under ERISA to count on the security of the investments and pension instruments that will fund their retirement. Our attorneys have worked on both sides some of the largest ERISA class action claims ever prosecuted. For many different reasons, however, an ERISA pension plan can suffer very substantial losses in the value of its holdings with severe damage resulting to the plan’s beneficiaries. If securities fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, conflict of interest, poor investment advice or imprudent investments have endangered your retirement through ERISA pension plan losses, contact a class action attorney at Loftus & Eisenberg.

Antitrust Litigation

Antitrust law protects trade and commerce from the formation of illegal monopolies, biased commercial restraints, and price fixing. Not only can certain monopolies be illegal, they can cause hardship for consumers through price inflation and over-domination of a market. Illegal monopolies can also affect the businesses (and the people) that were bought out by the larger company by violating anti-trust laws.

Antitrust law requires that you move quickly to address an antitrust violation, the law makes very few exceptions for the late filing of an antitrust complaint so if you believe you are a victim of antitrust violation, including any of the following, the business lawyers at Loftus & Eisenberg can help.

Professional Malpractice

Accounting Malpractice

Our Illinois Malpractice Attorneys have significant experience representing clients who were victimized by an accountant’s violation of accounting by breaching contracts, giving bad advice, or conducting improper audits. Accountants must abide by rules and principles and while auditors are charged with detecting internal weaknesses and performing fraud risk assessments, failure to do so may constitute audit accounting malpractice.

Legal Malpractice

When you go to a lawyer for help, you expect a great degree of care, as you rightly should. Attorney-client relationships are fiduciary in nature. They require that you be able to trust your lawyer and that he or she faithfully executes his or her duties of care. Legal malpractice may occur when an attorney is negligent, fails to pay attention to critical deadlines such as the statute of limitations, or offers advice that damages the client’s interests. However, it does not occur when an attorney behaves prudently, as another reasonable lawyer in the same practice area would, and yet there is a bad outcome, such as the loss of a jury trial.

Transactional and Business Planning

The Chicago business attorneys at Loftus & Eisenberg understands the unique needs of businesses of all sizes, and the requirement that all transactions and contracts are handled in the most efficient and effective way possible. The firm puts its extensive experience in litigating hundreds of business law disputes to work in order to ensure the success of each transaction and prevent disputes from starting in the first place, through negotiating contracts aggressively for our clients, knowing what terms really matter in any deal, ensuring the client’s legal protection across all business matters including:

• Business entity selection and formation
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Sale or purchase of a business;
• Shareholder agreements;
• Partnership agreements;
• Operating agreements;
• Employment agreements;
• Non-compete or non-solicitation agreements;
• Real estate contracts, including purchases, zoning issues, land use, and leasing;
• Construction contracts, including development and financing issues;
• Non-compete or non-solicitation agreements;
• Employment contracts, including severance and termination issues.

Trust and Estate Litigation

One of the most common types of disputes in this context is a will contest. Common grounds on which a will contest may be based include undue influence, lack of capacity to make a will, and fraud. Undue influence exists when a beneficiary or third party exerts influence that prevented the decedent from exercising his or her own will in preparing or signing the document. A lack of testamentary capacity is an inability to know and remember who are the natural recipients of an estate.

Loftus & Eisenberg Chicago-based business litigation attorneys provide affordable, effective legal representation to clients of all sizes that are faced with business conflicts and other legal disputes in Chicago and throughout Cook County. We also represent clients in Arlington Heights, Glencoe, Evanston, and in communities across Lake and Will Counties, such as in Waukegan, Naperville, and Joliet.

See how we can help you navigate needs of those embroiled in commercial disputes and litigation. Call or text at 312-899-6625, info@loftusandeisenberg.com, or contact us via our online form. We look forward to helping solve your problems.