Civ­il Dis­putes & Litigation

What is Civ­il Litigation?

Civ­il lit­i­ga­tion is the process of dis­pute res­o­lu­tion between mem­bers of a com­mu­ni­ty through the court sys­tem. The law grants to indi­vid­u­als the right to sue for com­pen­sa­tion or for spe­cif­ic action in mat­ters such as breach of con­tract, defama­tion and negligence.

When can I sue someone?

If you feel that you’ve been wronged but it’s not a crim­i­nal mat­ter to be dealt with by the police then you may be able to com­mence a law­suit against some­one. The kinds of dis­putes that are dealt with under civ­il law include dis­putes between:-

  • Neigh­bours
  • Cus­tomers and suppliers
  • Busi­ness partners
  • Land­lords and tenants
  • Buy­ers and sell­ers of property
  • Home own­ers and builders
  • Employ­ees and employers
  • Execu­tors or ben­e­fi­cia­ries in deceased estates
  • Own­ers of copy­rights and patents
  • Cred­i­tors and debtors
  • Acci­dent victims

Dif­fer­ent kinds of legal cas­es have dif­fer­ent time lim­i­ta­tions imposed so it’s impor­tant that you seek legal advice quick­ly to find out if you can com­mence legal proceedings.

How to file an action — the civ­il lit­i­ga­tion process

Pri­or to court pro­ceed­ings being com­menced, the first course of action is always to seek a res­o­lu­tion to the dis­pute, sav­ing both time and mon­ey. There are a num­ber of alter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion meth­ods which can be used includ­ing round table nego­ti­a­tion, con­flict medi­a­tion, con­cil­i­a­tion, and arbi­tra­tion. Dis­pute res­o­lu­tion lawyers can assist with this process.

If all attempts to set­tle the dis­pute fail then the dis­pute will be tak­en to trial.

Tri­al pro­ceed­ings are lengthy and some­what complex.
The par­tic­u­lar court forms which need to be com­plet­ed to com­mence a civ­il mat­ter vary accord­ing to the type of dis­pute so its best to seek legal advice in regard to this.

How we can help

We are expe­ri­enced dis­pute res­o­lu­tion civ­il lit­i­ga­tion solic­i­tors and have proven expe­ri­ence across a wide range of civ­il suits including:-

  • Com­mer­cial litigation
  • Busi­ness litigation
  • Employ­ment litigation
  • Unfair dis­missal
  • Divorce dis­putes
  • Will dis­putes
  • Debt recov­ery
  • Build­ing and prop­er­ty disputes
  • Divid­ing fence disputes
  • Breach of contract
  • Breach of copyright