Are you searching for effective San Diego shareholder dispute resolution attorneys? Are you in the midst of a legal dispute involving your rights or financial interests as a shareholder or investor in California?
Key Takeaways About the Effective San Diego Shareholder Dispute Resolution Attorneys at Watkins Firm:
- Watkins Firm has a proven track record extending almost 40 years here in San Diego, across the State of California, and in national trials garnishing substantial media attention.
- Shareholder and investor disputes are almost always about money. The first question to ask yourself is: “What are my goals and objectives for this situation?”
- Look for attorneys with extensive experience in all mediums including negotiations, filing or responding to a lawsuit, settlement conferences, mediation, arbitration, and at trial. Effective shareholder dispute attorneys at the Watkins Firm are able to resolve the vast majority of these cases through effective, leveraged negotiation – the fastest and least expensive path to accomplish your goals and objectives as a shareholder or investor involved in a dispute.
Decades of Experience Resolving Investor and Shareholder Disputes
The Watkins Firm has decades of experience resolving investor and shareholder disputes here in San Diego and throughout California. We often represent a minority shareholder or investor who believes they are being underpaid on their holdings in a corporate investment. This can extend to being “frozen out” of crucial business decisions, and being denied access to critical business information and the corporation’s books. When there are major issues with controlling interests, corporate officers or the Board of Directors itself, the Watkins Firm helps shareholders to bring an appropriate action against those in control of the company, and in some cases on behalf of the corporation itself.
What Are Your Goals and Objectives?
The important thing to consider as a shareholder or investor is simply this: What are my goals and objectives for this situation?
Based upon your goals and objectives, the effective San Diego shareholder dispute resolution attorneys at the Watkins Firm will craft a tiered strategy designed to accomplish those goals in the shortest period of time and in a cost-efficient manner. It may surprise you to learn that the skilled investment and shareholder dispute attorneys at the Watkins Firm are able to resolve the majority of these cases through effective negotiation. We take a unique approach to litigation that is specifically designed to get to the core of a dispute, establish common ground and bring a solution to the table quickly and effectively.
Your Watkins Firm attorney works to quickly establish a thorough, well-documented chronology of events and a mastery of available damages. These are the tools required to draw opposing parties and their counsel into effective, leveraged negotiations. The Watkins Firm is able to resolve the vast majority of our shareholder and investor dispute cases through effective, leveraged negotiation. This is the fastest and least expensive route to resolving any shareholder or investor dispute in California.
Mediation and Arbitration or Trial
When a dispute cannot be resolved through effective, leveraged negotiation, a lawsuit is usually filed. The next step is the Court’s own settlement conference. Mediation and arbitration are two potential time-saving and cost-efficient alternatives to a trial. When the case cannot be resolved through effective, leveraged negotiation a shareholder or investor dispute will often require the services of a neutral “Mediator”, and our legal team represents you throughout this process while protecting your interests. Mediation is required prior to any trial in our Courts and is another cost-effective and timely tool to resolve part or all of the shareholder or investor dispute at hand. Mediation is also a confidential and private legal venue that keeps your personal and professional confidential information out of the public record.
In some cases, contracts between a company and its investors or shareholders require arbitration. Arbitration is a different form of legal venue with its own set of rules. The lawyers at the Watkins Firm have extensive experience in arbitration, and work to move things smoothly through the process while advancing your goals and objectives. Arbitration is a lot like a mini-trial, and the extensive trial experience of the Watkins Firm helps to manage your arbitration, including the selection of the arbiter in your case. The arbiter has extensive authority to marshal evidence and testimony, including briefs from each side’s attorneys. We work to thoroughly document and present a strong case. Arbitration is final, however, it almost always eliminates the risk and wild potential swings of a trial.
If the parties are not required to seek arbitration (or simply choose not to) the case may proceed to a trial. Ask about the Watkins Firm’s extensive, successful and proven track record at trial and how this experience will not only matter in the courtroom, but at every step of the dispute itself.
Pro-Tip: “If, let’s say, you don’t have a shareholder agreement, or you have a weak shareholder agreement and management has broad discretion to do a lot of things, and they’re getting ready to do some questionable things, to make a big profit. And you come along and say, wait a minute, I think something’s wrong here. And you pose an objection. Well, before you file a lawsuit, this opportunity that management has is still there. So if you are the squeaky wheel right away, before they go forward with whatever they’re doing, then you may profit from that. But if you’re not, then it’ll just happen. And instead of sharing in the profits, you’ll be fighting to claim you had rights to get some money back.
This is often a conflict of interest between their obligation to their shareholders and their own personal interests.
Everybody hears the term conflict of interest and they think it’s something like special or amazing or complicated, but it’s really not. This is the oldest con game. There is a common example: you are working somewhere and you get access to checks coming in. So you go form a company in another state, that sounds just like the name on the checks that are coming in. And you start taking those checks and putting them in your own bank account. Well, think about that. If you’re a corporation, you’re in management, and you have an uncle that forms a company and you start sending business that way, and, before you know it, you are taking assets from one company and giving it to another company, which technically you don’t have anything in writing as an ownership of, but you have a conflict of interest and you’re breaching your fiduciary duty. And so if the shareholders aren’t watching carefully this happens. I would say 20% of our litigation every month is based on shareholder disputes, fights between shareholders and the corporation and, breach of fiduciary duty.
A fiduciary duty is basically the obligation to act in the best interests of those that they have a charge to, a responsibility to, because they have such an advantage. The term fiduciary duty comes in this definition when somebody has an advantage of knowledge of power, or of money over somebody else who’s invested in good faith. They have a duty not just to do what the contracts say, but they have a duty to be a fiduciary, to take their position in favor of the shareholder and against themselves, if there is a conflict. So they have the utmost duty to disclose and to act in good faith for the interest of the shareholder.
One example is the lack of a valid corporate purpose for a transaction or the action of an officer or a director or a shareholder. This is very common, happens all the time, usually because there are no limits placed on the executive team or the management. But what happens is all of a sudden, you know, the new president needs a sailboat! Yes, there is a lot we can do about that.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner
Effective San Diego Shareholder Dispute Resolution Attorneys at the Watkins Firm
How can the effective San Diego shareholder dispute resolution attorneys at the Watkins Firm increase the odds of success in your case? If you are an investor or shareholder who is in dispute with another shareholder, corporate officers or a Board of Directors you need a law firm with an extensive, proven track record representing shareholders and investors in disputes and litigation for decades here in San Diego and Southern California. We invite you to review our podcast Episode 11 – Business Dispute Resolution as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today..
Meet Daniel Watkins:
Daniel W. Watkins is a true people person who sincerely listens. He cares deeply about what others are going through. Dan enjoys digging into the facts and finding creative solutions to problems. He contributes his insights candidly and constructively.
Dan’s interest in people make him deeply invested in every relationship and his exuberant personality makes him a true litigator. Dan fights for his clients with a fierce and calculated commitment.
Dan has practiced in the areas of business, medical practices and healthcare business, high tech/science, real estate and employment defense law since 1987. He is a trusted litigation strategist and true trial attorney with over 50 jury and bench trials to his credit. Dan has successfully represented both large companies and individuals and achieved substantial victories in well-publicized trials throughout California and the U.S.
He is experienced in business and corporate formation and administration, as well as all forms of alternative dispute resolution, including binding arbitration and mediation.
THE ROAD TO BECOMING A BUSINESS LAWYER AND LITIGATOR
Dan has almost 40 years of experience working with, for and against some of the largest insurance companies in the country. He has successfully tried and litigated cases in the areas of Healthcare Compliance, Commercial Litigation, Unfair Business Practices, Fraud, Breach of Contract, Battery, Premises Liability, Product Defect, Medical Malpractice, Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, Construction Defect, as well as Unfair Competition, Defamation, and Trade Secrets.
In December 2003, Dan commenced litigation against Health South Surgery Centers-West, Inc and its’ subsidiaries, exposing the company’s extensive mismanagement and misconduct of its’ surgery centers. Dan has also been asked by some of California’s largest municipalities and corporations to conduct legally required investigations into matters involving alleged employment discrimination and harassment.
