Business Litigation

William Markham and Dorn Bishop have litigated many business disputes and commercial claims and often obtained successful results because of their overall approach and thorough understanding of contract law, corporation law, and business torts.[1]The essential business torts are (1) breach of fiduciary duty; (2) self-dealing; (3) misappropriation; (4) fraud — i.e., intentional misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, fraudulent … Continue readingThey can perform most kinds of business litigation or manage a team of lawyers specially assembled to litigate a particular case.

In addition, Mr. Markham and Mr. Bishop are well-trained in other areas of the law that sometimes have dispositive importance in business litigation. Mr. Bishop, before becoming a federal prosecutor, was a partner at Latham & Watkins and led its San Diego insurance group. In that capacity, he gained an excellent understanding of insurance contracts, the legal doctrines that govern their interpretation, and an insurer’s statutory and contractual duties to its insureds. Thus trained, he advises his clients and sometimes litigates their claims on these points, and in particular he has litigated substantial and landmark cases that resulted in significant reforms of California’s laws on insurance contracts and an insurer’s various duties to its insureds.

Mr. Markham has worked mostly on antitrust matters since the early 2000s, but before then he litigated and tried all manner of contract claims as well as various business torts, and he occasionally litigated claims for securities fraud under the principal federal and California anti-fraud statutes.[2]See 15 U.S.C. § 78j(b) (codifies Securities Exchange Act § 10(b); 17 C.F.R. § 240.10b-5 (promulgates SEC Rule 10b-5); see also California Corporations Code § 25401 et seq.He has also litigated substantial claims for false advertising and trademark infringement under the Lanham Act. He continues to accept these kinds of cases from time to time and remains well-versed in these topics, having learned about them much earlier in his career.

Mr. Markham’s antitrust work also improves his ability to litigate other kinds of complex commercial litigation. He closely follows business and economic trends in various industries served by his clients, and, to improve his understanding of antitrust law, he has learned the fundamentals of classical economic theory, microeconomics, and industrial organization. That knowledge is also useful to him in complex business litigation and even when analyzing disputes in smaller cases.

Elsewhere on this site you can read more about our experience handling the following kinds of business litigation: trademark infringement and related offenses, false advertising, securities fraud, RICO claims, and insurance disputes.