It may be that a competitor has interfered with a business contract, an employee has stolen your trade secrets or breached a non-compete agreement, or a business partner has stolen from your company.  You have to go to court to protect the company though you’d rather not.

An Easier Path

Many lawyers follow the hard path. They file a lawsuit and head into a long, expensive and painstaking process of discovery.

But there is an easier way. A judge can grant a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to stop an individual’s actions even without that person or his lawyer being in court. Our clients appreciate that a TRO provides immediate relief from the court system when a party can show irreparable harm will be caused if someone is allowed to remain in control of assets that belong to the company.

Requesting a TRO involves gathering evidence such as affidavits and paperwork immediately and getting it before a judge as soon as possible.

If you are successful, the judge will shut down the person who is damaging your business by revealing trade secrets, violating non-compete clauses or engaging in illegal anti-competitive practices.

Examples of our TRO Successes

Courts are often reluctant to interfere with free market enterprise though, and injunctions can be difficult to obtain. But, we know what it takes and we haven’t lost a TRO request yet. Here are a few examples of our successes:

• A partner had gradually taken control of an oil services company and siphoned off millions of dollars behind the scenes. An affidavit from the suing partner was all we needed to get the bad actor stopped in his tracks.
• A CFO breached his fiduciary duty to a mid-sized oilfield services company and several shareholders. We used a TRO to get him and a controlling shareholder locked out of the building.
• A controlling shareholder planned to move the company’s business into a new entity. With a TRO, we stopped cold his plans to shut down the company.
• A minority shareholder physically restricted and removed from employment a long-standing member of the company, and did so without the consent of the majority shareholder. Within 20 hours, our TRO, followed by an injunction, returned access to the restricted partner. Our fast action forced the matter to speedily settle without any further damage to the company’s financial health.

Though a TRO is temporary, it provides some immediate relief, gets discovery rolling at a faster pace and puts the advantage on your side.

And here’s the best part: It also means lower attorneys’ fees and expenses because the longer a matter drags on, the more the fees and expenses tend to grow.

In a business dispute, the tables can turn very quickly. Lawyers at our firm, who specialize in getting an early advantage through TROs, work to make sure that the tables turn your way.