When the claim is about conduct, not a contract
These matters usually surface after something specific: a departing employee leaves with customer lists or files, a competitor tells your customers something untrue, a partner steers an opportunity to a company they quietly own, or someone induces a counterparty to walk away from you. Owners often describe the situation as unfair before they describe it as legal. The question we work through is whether the conduct falls into a recognized business tort and whether the harm can be traced to it. Contract claims and tort claims frequently travel together in the same dispute, and the same set of facts can support both.
Evidence lives in conduct and in loss
Because these claims turn on what someone did, the proof tends to sit in communications rather than in a signed document: emails, messages, file-access logs, device records, and the timeline of who left and what happened afterward. Preserve that material as soon as you suspect a problem, including anything on personal devices used for work, and ask your IT team to suspend routine deletion. Just as important is the loss itself, meaning which customers left, what revenue changed, and what the trend looked like before. Reconstructing that months later is harder and far less persuasive than capturing it while it is fresh.
What the first conversation covers
We look at the conduct, the documents you already have, and whether agreements in the background change the picture, including employment, confidentiality, operating, and vendor terms. Which state's law applies matters a great deal here, because these claims are creatures of state law and are not uniform across the country. We also ask whether your goal is to stop the conduct quickly, to recover what was lost, or both, since those point toward different first steps. Some of these matters are resolved through a letter and a negotiated arrangement rather than a filing.
