What should you do with a vendor breach of contract?  What actions are you required to take by law to protect your financial position so that you can recover any resulting losses?  Is a lawsuit the best strategy to resolve the breach of contract?  The experienced contract and dispute attorneys at the Watkins Firm will guide you through this challenge step-by-step.  The first action you should take is to review the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.

The first thing you must do with a vendor breach of contract is take immediate, prudent steps to mitigate the damages, so that you preserve all rights to recover your losses down the road.  California law requires the party who has been harmed by the breach of contract to take reasonable, prudent and timely action to decrease the impact of the breach upon their own business and to “mitigate” the potential losses that might result.

We file business lawsuits when it serves our client’s interests.  This can often help to get a stalled process moving forward.  We guide our clients on the actions to take and help to immediately document these actions, the facts surrounding the dispute and the resulting impact upon our client’s business.  In a vendor breach of contract case we quickly discover what happened, and work diligently to negotiate a resolution that meets our clients objectives while preserving the maximum benefit intended by the original agreement.

Business litigation is all about the damages.  The Watkins Firm works to establish a detailed, well-documented chronology of facts and a mastery of the associated damages.  We have the strength of the facts and the damages on our side, and our effective attorneys use these tools to engage the other party and drive the conversation to a productive settlement. It may surprise you to learn the Watkins Firm resolves the vast majority of our breach of contract cases through effective, leveraged negotiation.  This is the fastest and least expensive path to manage a breach of contract dispute.

Mediation and arbitration are separate legal venues that provide a more efficient, productive and timely resolution to protracted disputes than going to trial.  The Watkins Firm is uniquely positioned to represent you at each phase of the process, from negotiation, through mediation and arbitration.  When necessary, we represent our clients before the Court and seek appropriate financial damages all available remedies on behalf of clients who have suffered losses with a vendor breach of contract.

Pro-Tip: “What are the important factors when you have a breach of contract case in front of you?  Bargaining power! The position and the identity of the people involved in the contract.  Lawsuits cost money. Sometimes people enter contracts and they know they’re going to breach, but they figure it’s worth it.  There’s so many other subtle things that we as lawyers think about just beyond the basic breach.  We’re ultimately focused on the facts and the damages. There’s so many more complicated things, because you’re going to battle with somebody over a breach of contract, and you’ve got to find out whether you can collect.

Some of these contracts are entered into, by tiny corporations with no assets. And so they breach and they don’t care if you sue them because they’re never gonna pay. So all those little subtle things about real life, how to sue somebody or how to defend a lawsuit for breach of contract, they come into play because after there’s a judgment, there’s still a collection process before there’s a judgment.

Parties have to consider what’s gonna happen, if they get sued, to their reputation. If you sue some somebody for breach of contract, can they sue you back? You have to consider timing. Should you sue now? Or should you wait? What is the defendant doing in their life? What are you doing in your life? How is this all going to affect you? All those things are the kind of reality you don’t learn in law school, but you learn after almost 40 years of doing this. Suing someone for breach of contract or defending someone for breach of contract gets much more complicated than just knowing the law.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

We invite you to review our podcast Episode 5 – Breach of Contract as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.