Shareholder disputes
Conflicts among shareholders, expulsion and withdrawal, valuation of the departing interest, and deadlock.
Area 01 · Commercial Disputes
When the case stops being about the case.
Conduct of significant disputes, emergency relief, and procedural strategy set by the effect on the operation, on the family wealth and on the shareholder relationships.
What is at stake
Significant commercial disputes are rarely decided by the legal theory alone. They are decided by the sequence of choices made before and during the proceeding: when to file, whether to seek emergency relief or to settle, the exposure each move creates, and the position the company is left in if the outcome goes against it.
This is because the proceeding is only one of the settings in which the dispute unfolds. While it runs, the company keeps operating, contracting, being audited and negotiating — and every procedural step echoes across those fronts. An injunction obtained without reading its side effects can cost more than it resolves.
Much litigation, however, is conducted as a self-contained exercise, detached from the strategy of the business. The firm works from the opposite premise: the procedural choice follows from the commercial reading, not the other way around.
Lines of work
Emergency relief
Preliminary and evidentiary injunctions, pre-action preservation of evidence, and asset-preservation measures.
Liability and piercing the corporate veil
Defense of shareholders and officers, and proceedings to disregard the separate legal personality of the company.
Contract litigation
Breach, termination, revision and liability under commercial contracts.
Enforcement and asset defense
Enforcement of instruments, defenses and challenges, and opposition to improper attachment of assets.
Out-of-court settlement
Structured negotiation where settlement produces a better result than the likely judicial outcome.
Publications in this area
Enforcement Against a Partner Can Reach a Spouse's Account Under Full Community Property
STJ: under full community property, enforcement against a partner can reach the spouse's bank account, with the marital share preserved.
Fraud Against Tax Enforcement Does Not Require Formal Service, Given Clear Knowledge of the Redirection
The STJ finds fraud against tax enforcement in a gift of property to family members even before personal service of process. Proof that the partner already had clear knowledge of the redirection is enough.
Piercing the corporate veil: the STJ's Theme 1,210 asks for more
Brazil's Superior Court of Justice set binding precedent: in civil and commercial matters, piercing requires actual proof of abuse of the corporate form. A company without attachable assets, or an irregular wind-up, is not enough.
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