Litigation & Dispute Resolution

As a result of the 2008 downturn in the global economy, financial institutions have been faced with difficult decisions about how to deal with their borrowers and other parties to loan and financing transactions. Borrowers, faced with extreme challenges to their businesses and the loss of the collateral they have pledged, have been raising affirmative claims against their lenders and defenses to the payment of their financial obligations. This tension requires financial institutions to ask themselves some difficult questions, often under crisis conditions:

• Do we have grounds to declare a default?
  
  
• Should we accelerate the debt?
  
  
• Can we stop advancing on the loan?
  
  
• What type of enforcement is prudent under the circumstances?
  
  
• How do we staff and document our negotiations with delinquent borrowers?
  
  
• How does our past course of conduct and correspondence with our borrower impact our position?
  
  
• What constitutes a threat or an affirmative defense to debt collection?
  
  
• How should we react to threats or defenses asserted by the borrower?
  
  
• What can we do to mitigate litigation risks?

These questions are not new to the financial industry or restricted to the current financial crisis, and Quarles & Brady has been helping clients answer them for many years. In our six offices across the country, our attorneys have helped to defend lenders, large and small. More than 30 of our attorneys, spanning all of our offices and practicing in multiple legal disciplines — from commercial litigation, finance and bankruptcy to real estate, corporate services and others — work together to protect our clients’ interests. Whether we are helping to shield lenders from liability in the first place or defending them against claims in state and federal courts, lender liability defense has been a bedrock practice of Quarles & Brady in all of our offices.