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Corporate disputes are rarely sudden: they incubate in an incomplete shareholders agreement and erupt at a meeting.
Challenge of shareholders and condominium meetings, civil, professional and directors liability, consumer protection and unfair competition, and domestic arbitration. These are disputes where the evidence usually sits in internal documents.
A well drafted agreement settles in advance what is later litigated: who decides, how shares are valued, what happens if a shareholder wants to exit and how ties are broken. It reduces business uncertainty and favours investment.
Minute books, shareholder registers, convening notices, financial statements and internal correspondence. The difference between a formal and a substantive defect in the notice or the vote decides a good part of these cases.
Where the contract contains an arbitration clause, the route is no longer the courts. It should be reviewed before filing any claim: an overlooked clause can cost the case on procedural grounds.
Notices served out of time, minutes that do not reflect what was discussed, board decisions with no basis in the articles of incorporation, and shareholders who stop receiving financial information. Documenting those signs in time is often the difference between an orderly negotiation and a process where evidence is reconstructed from memory.
It is one of the usual grounds. But a challenge requires identifying the defect precisely, proving standing and acting within the statutory period. The initial review focuses on those three points.
Personal liability is not presumed: the act, the damage and the link must be proven. That is why the work is done with accounts and minutes, not with suspicions.
It depends on the clause, the amount and the need for interim measures. Arbitration offers privacy and a specialised tribunal; the courts offer urgent measures more readily.
The initial assessment establishes what is at stake, what it will cost and what the real prospect is.