At Columbo Deol, our commercial litigation practice handles disputes arising out of contracts, partnerships, and other business relationships. Our clients are companies, founders, investors, executives, partners, and other principals, and our cases often involve disputes between people or entities that were once in business together.

We try cases and argue appeals in state and federal courts and in arbitration throughout the country, with concentrations in California, Texas, New York, Washington State, and the District of Columbia.

Breach of Contract

We handle commercial contract disputes across a range of industries and agreement types, including cases over services and supply agreements, licensing and distribution contracts, joint venture arrangements, indemnification provisions, and the agreements that govern relationships between principals and the companies they have built, invested in, or worked with. For companies, we pursue and defend claims arising from vendor failures, customer disputes, partner conduct, and post-closing fights with counterparties. For executives, founders, and investors, we litigate over equity grants, founder agreements, advisor and consulting contracts, side letters, and the agreements that often outlast the relationships that produced them.

Business Torts

We handle the disputes that arise when contract law does not capture the wrong, including fraud and misrepresentation, tortious interference with contracts and prospective business relationships, trade libel and commercial defamation, conversion, civil conspiracy, and unfair competition under California's Unfair Competition Law and parallel state statutes. Common matters include former insiders accused of taking customers, vendors, or employees with them, claims that one company sabotaged another's deal or commercial relationship, fraud-in-the-inducement claims after transactions collapse, and defamation claims arising out of business and professional relationships.

Founder and Partnership Disputes

Founder and partnership disputes involve people who were once aligned: founders who built a company together but no longer agree on its direction, partners pushing each other out of professional services firms, LLC members fighting over control or distributions, and minority investors in a closely held business squaring off against the majority. We handle these matters in both directions, representing principals who are being squeezed out and those who need to address an underperforming or destructive partner. Our work in this area includes buyouts, judicial dissolution, accounting demands, and emergency relief to preserve assets, books, or operations during the fight.

Breach of Fiduciary Duty

We litigate fiduciary duty claims involving officers, directors, partners, LLC members, and majority shareholders of closely held and venture-backed companies. Our cases include direct actions by injured shareholders or members, derivative actions brought on behalf of the company, claims involving self-dealing and conflicted transactions, allegations of usurpation of corporate opportunity, and disputes over conduct that benefits one constituency at the expense of another.