It’s the nightmare of every business owner, but being hit with a lawsuit is not at all uncommon. In fact, more than 100 million lawsuits are filed against businesses in the USA alone every year.

Ideally, your company should do everything you can to avoid the possibility of litigation, but if despite your best efforts, you do end up being served papers, here are some tips to help you get through it:

Contact a Business Attorney

Before you do anything else, get in touch with a decent business attorney like Zarwin Baum, who is experienced with business litigation. When you get sued, you need expert advice, and you need it quick, so don’t waste time trying to get in touch with the parties involved or getting upset about the situation, call in professional help immediately.

Review the Lawsuit

With the help of your business attorney, you should go through the lawsuit very carefully checking that all the information is accurate. If even a single thing in the suit is untrue, you may be able to get it thrown out on that basis, which is the ideal. If not, then reviewing it will at least give you both a good idea of what you are dealing with.

Don’t Talk to the Plaintiff

It can be tempting to get in touch with the person who is suing you to see if you can persuade them to desist with the lawsuit or maybe because you want to understand more about why they are suing you. This is a REALLY bad idea because it could look like you are trying to intimidate them or influence them in some way. If you do need to get in touch, do it through your lawyers.

Let Your Insurance Company Know

You should let your insurance company know about the lawsuit as soon as you know about it. Why? Because you may be covered by your insurance for many of the costs associated with fighting the lawsuit, and there is often a clause detailing how long you can wait to inform the company, which is often a very short time period, Not only that but being sued may affect your insurance policy in a number of ways, so you need to let them know now if you don’t want to potentially void your policy.

Write a Response

You normally have around 30 days to submit a written response to any lawsuit made against you., Your business attorney will be able to draft you with this, but obviously, you will need to take all of the information into account and decide on what your response should be.

Get a Good Defense Attorney

If you think there is merit in the lawsuit and the client is likely to proceed with a claim, then you indeed to ensure that your business has a really good defense attorney on your side. This will give you the best chance of a good outcome that enables you to stay in business and uphold your reputation.

If you’re served with a lawsuit, don’t ignore it, do the above instead!