Columbo Deol LLP handles disputes arising out of contracts, partnerships, investments, and other business relationships. Our clients are companies, founders, investors, executives, partners, and other principals. Many of our matters often involve disputes between people or entities that were once in business together and no longer are, which makes them complex in ways that go beyond the legal and financial questions. We handle them with rigor and discretion.

Michael Columbo and John-Paul S. Deol try cases and handle appeals in California state and federal courts, as well as representing clients in arbitration throughout the country. The firm’s attorneys are admitted in California, New York, Texas, Washington, and the District of Columbia and appear pro hac vice elsewhere with local counsel.

How We Approach Commercial Disputes

Most commercial disputes settle. The best settlements are usually reached when the other side understands that you are prepared to try the case. We prepare every matter from the first day as though it will be tried.

Michael Columbo built his courtroom experience as a federal prosecutor and spent nearly a decade as an enforcement attorney for the Federal Election Commission before entering private practice, where he has led high-profile litigation on behalf of national figures and major companies. He has tried dozens of cases over more than 25 years in practice.

John-Paul S. Deol spent years at Am Law 100 firms, representing Fortune 100 companies and other large corporations in complex litigation before building a practice representing executives and founders against companies of the same size. He also served as a court-appointed Temporary Judge of the San Francisco Superior Court on the discovery calendar, hearing and deciding discovery disputes.

Types of Commercial Disputes

Breach of Contract

We handle commercial contract disputes across a range of industries and agreement types, including 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 outlast the relationships that produced them.

Business Torts

When contract law does not capture the wrong, we litigate 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 statutes.

Common matters include former insiders accused of taking customers, vendors, or employees with them upon departure; claims that one company sabotaged another's deal; fraud-in-the-inducement claims after a transaction collapses, and defamation arising out of business and professional relationships.

Founder and Partnership Disputes

These disputes involve people who were once aligned, such as founders who built a company together but no longer agree on its direction, partners pushing each other out of a professional services firm, LLC members fighting over control or distributions, and minority investors in a closely held business at odds with 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. The work includes buyouts, judicial dissolution, accounting demands, and emergency relief to preserve assets, books, or operations while the fight is underway.

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, self-dealing and conflicted transactions, usurpation of corporate opportunity, and conduct that benefits one constituency at the expense of another.

Emergency and Injunctive Relief

The first days of a dispute can determine what remains possible. We seek and defend against temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions to freeze assets, preserve books and records, stop misuse of proprietary information by a departing insider, protect trade secrets, or halt a transaction. Both partners have obtained emergency relief in state and federal court, including in matters heard on days’ notice.

Cross-Border and Multi-Jurisdictional Disputes

We represent foreign and domestic parties in matters spanning U.S. and foreign proceedings, including discovery under 28 U.S.C. § 1782 in aid of litigation abroad, coordination with counsel before foreign courts, and disputes involving international investors and family offices. John-Paul Deol is fluent in Spanish and Italian and works directly with Spanish- and Italian-speaking parties and their counsel.