Complex Commercial Litigation

Business Litigation for Companies Whose Disputes Are Really About Competition

Most business disputes are not just about the contract, the trade secret, or the advertisement — they are about market position. A rival hires your team and takes your playbook. A counterparty terminates the agreement that was your channel to customers. A ratings site or industry group steers the market away from you. A competitor’s lawsuit is the competition, continued by other means. Bona Law litigates these disputes for plaintiffs and defendants across the country — and because we are antitrust lawyers by trade, we see the competitive architecture inside a commercial case that other firms miss.

We handle complex commercial litigation from pre-suit strategy through trial, arbitration, and appeal: breach of contract and business torts, partnership and fiduciary disputes, trade-secret and restrictive-covenant litigation, false advertising and Lanham Act claims, unfair competition, civil RICO, and defense against government investigations and enforcement actions targeting business practices. We prosecute when a business has been wronged and defend when one is accused — often in the same industries, which is why our judgment about how these cases actually resolve is grounded in both chairs.

Recent Results

In January 2026, a federal court dismissed both the RICO and Lanham Act counterclaims brought against our client PharmacyChecker.com, holding the causal theories legally insufficient — and incurable. In the same litigation campaign, Aaron Gott secured a published Ninth Circuit decision for PharmacyChecker, and the firm won the earlier dismissal of a mirror-image false-advertising counterclaim in New York. And in a multi-front Minnesota contract war, we defended a software company against implied-partnership and breach-of-contract claims through several court actions and a parallel arbitration — which ended with an award denying the adversary’s most significant claims and terminating the remaining contracts between the parties.

Representative Experience

PharmacyChecker.com v. LegitScript (D. Or.) — defeated RICO and Lanham Act counterclaims against an online pharmacy-verification company; the court dismissed both claims on proximate-cause grounds.
Ariix, LLC v. NutriSearch Corp. (Ninth Circuit) — successful published federal appellate reversal holding that a purportedly independent product-ratings guide secretly rigged in a paying partner’s favor can be “commercial speech” subject to Lanham Act false-advertising liability.
McWhite-York v. Foster Farms (E.D. Cal.) — defending Foster Farms in a putative class action arising from a consumer product recall.
Persolvent v. Arux Software (Minnesota; arbitration) — defended a software company against implied-partnership and breach-of-contract claims across multiple district-court actions and arbitration; the arbitration panel denied the claimant’s most significant claims and terminated all remaining contracts between the parties. On appeal, we challenged an injunction restraining our client’s sales as an unlawful allocation of markets.
PharmacyChecker.com v. National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (S.D.N.Y.) — prosecuting a Lanham Act false-advertising claim over an industry group’s “Not Recommended” blacklist; the firm also won dismissal of the adversary group’s Lanham Act counterclaim for lack of commercial injury.
Trade-secret and unfair-competition prosecution — automated packaging equipment — represented Gemini Automation Systems, LeafyPack, and Plan IT Packaging in trade-secret, contract, and unfair-competition litigation against former executives accused of taking confidential customer, pricing, and technical information to a rival enterprise.
Strand / Amara Enterprises v. USANA Health Sciences (D. Utah) — breach-of-contract action for one of the company’s most successful distributorships after a termination the complaint alleged was pretextual.
Contract litigation with IDIQ (C.D. Cal.) — represented two credit-services companies in complex commercial contract litigation over referral and revenue-sharing agreements for credit-monitoring services, including claims and counterclaims on termination, withheld commissions, and business torts.
Caldera + Lab, Inc. — consumer-privacy arbitration and demand defense — representing a consumer-products company in arbitration and in responding to a series of tester-plaintiff demands and complaints asserting website-privacy and tracking claims, including alleged violations of the California Invasion of Privacy Act.
Defense of a software-company Chief Technology Officer (Delaware) — defended a CTO against non-solicitation and no-hire claims asserted by a former employer, at the intersection of restrictive-covenant litigation and antitrust labor-market doctrine.
Civil RICO counseling and complaint drafting — advised a prominent law firm and drafted a complaint addressing civil RICO issues and related business torts.
Lanham Act defense — Lighting Commerce, Décor Selections, and Larry Krayzman — defended resale-market defendants against Lanham Act and related claims in federal courts in Illinois and Georgia. See our resource on the first sale doctrine in trademark and copyright law.
LensDiscounters.com — fee award against a patent troll (S.D. Fla.) — defended an online retailer against a patent assertion entity and won an attorneys’ fee award against the plaintiff.
People v. Enayati (Los Angeles Superior Court) — defending a family of Santa Monica property owners in a California Unfair Competition Law and False Advertising Law enforcement action brought by the City of Santa Monica, with a demurrer challenging the underlying ordinance on state-law preemption and other legal grounds.
Tribal sovereign immunity defamation defense (Inyo County Superior Court) — defending a tribal entity in a defamation case.
City of Rancho Cucamonga v. DR Landmark (San Bernardino County Superior Court) — represented a property owner in an eminent-domain and quiet-title dispute over a statutory repurchase right.
Li v. Akal Security (Ninth Circuit) — argued and won vacatur of a summary judgment on appeal, on negligence and federal procedural issues.

We also counsel companies before disputes ripen — evaluating potential claims against suppliers, distributors, and other counterparties (including a recent refusal-to-supply, unfair-competition, and tortious-interference analysis for a commercial and industrial water-treatment services company), responding to demand-letter campaigns, and structuring exits from commercial relationships.

Our Complex Commercial Litigation Team

Jarod M. Bona (Founder, CEO, and Partner, San Diego) — trial and appellate litigator; Gibson Dunn and DLA Piper alum and Eighth Circuit law clerk; litigates false-advertising, trade-secret, and contract disputes alongside the firm’s antitrust docket.
Jim Lerner (Partner and Director of Litigation, New York) — three decades of complex commercial and antitrust litigation at Winston & Strawn, Dewey & LeBoeuf, and Weil Gotshal.
Aaron Gott (Partner and COO, Minneapolis) — argued and won the Ninth Circuit cases of Ariix v. NutriSearch and Li v. Akal Security; defended an education-technology company against a $50 million partnership non-compete claim.
Luke Hasskamp (Partner, San Diego) — civil RICO and complex business disputes in courts, arbitrations, and administrative proceedings; three federal clerkships.
Jon Cieslak (Partner, San Diego) — a decade at Cooley litigating breach-of-contract, unfair-competition, false-advertising, trademark, securities-fraud, and trade-secret claims; former federal district court clerk.
Joseph Trujillo (Partner, San Diego) — trial litigator; Dechert and Orrick alum; N.D. Cal. law clerk; litigates civil RICO, trade secrets (DTSA/state law), and business torts; argued the motion that defeated the RICO and Lanham Act counterclaims in PharmacyChecker.
Aaron Lawrence (Attorney, New York) — Quinn Emanuel alum; Delaware Court of Chancery merger litigation and bankruptcy adversary proceedings.
Kimberly Straight-Gagnon (Discovery Counsel, San Diego) — dedicated discovery strategy and management for document-intensive commercial cases.

Meet the full team on our attorneys page.

Why Bona Law for Complex Commercial Litigation

Our results. A January 2026 federal dismissal of RICO and Lanham Act counterclaims, an arbitration award that ended an adversary’s campaign, and a published Ninth Circuit false-advertising precedent.
We sit in both chairs. We prosecute and defend the same kinds of claims, so our advice about risk, settlement value, and endgame comes from having sat on the other side.
We’re a boutique with a BigLaw bench. Our commercial litigators trained and practiced at Quinn Emanuel, Cooley, Dechert, Orrick, Davis Polk, Gibson Dunn, Winston & Strawn, DLA Piper, and Weil Gotshal, among others — we offer boutique economics, with partner attention on every matter.
One team through trial and appeal. We handle our cases from complaint (or answer) through trial and up on appeal — including published appellate wins.
We understand markets. When your dispute is really about market position, you want lawyers fluent in how markets work. Markets are our first language.

Where Commercial Disputes Arise

Contracts and business relationships — breach of contract, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, distribution and supply agreements, licensing and revenue-sharing arrangements, terminations and exits. See our resources on damages in California breach-of-contract cases and on how California courts handle force majeure clauses.
Business torts — tortious interference with contract and prospective advantage, fraud, disparagement, and defamation. See the elements of a tortious interference claim under California law and our analysis of the California Supreme Court’s independent-wrongfulness rule.
Partnership, fiduciary, and business-divorce disputes — fights among co-owners, founders, and joint venturers, including implied-partnership claims like those we defeated in the Arux litigation.
Trade secrets and restrictive covenants — DTSA and state-law misappropriation claims, non-compete and non-solicit disputes, and emergency injunctive relief. See our resources on trade secret litigation in California, defenses to trade-secret claims, trade-secret disclosure statements, and preliminary injunctions in federal court.
False advertising and the Lanham Act — competitor advertising claims, rigged ratings and reviews, and industry blacklists. Our dedicated Lanham Act and False Advertising practice page covers this work in depth; start with Do I Have a Lanham Act Claim Against My Competitor for False Advertising?
Unfair competition — California’s Unfair Competition Law (§ 17200) and its state-law cousins, as claims, counterclaims, and government enforcement actions.
Civil RICO — defending businesses against RICO claims attached to commercial disputes for treble-damages leverage and evaluating RICO theories for plaintiffs with the right facts.
Privacy and consumer-claim campaigns — defending consumer-products and e-commerce companies against serial website-privacy and tracking demands, including California Invasion of Privacy Act claims, in arbitration and pre-litigation.
Competition-adjacent claims — when a commercial dispute reveals monopolization, exclusion, or cartel conduct, our antitrust litigation team is the same firm, not a referral. When government action is the problem, see Challenges to Anticompetitive and Unlawful Government Action. When the dispute is the deal itself, our Mergers & Acquisitions practice handles both antitrust clearance and merger litigation; and when a commercial fight draws a grand jury subpoena or civil investigative demand, our Antitrust Investigations team responds. And if you have been blocked from competing in your market, start there.

We litigate these disputes in the industries we already know from our antitrust work, including agriculture and food, healthcare, pharmaceutical, and medical devices, construction and building materials, real estate and housing, telecommunications and platforms, energy and commodities trading, and blockchain and digital assets.

How We Help

Pre-litigation strategy — claim and exposure assessment, demand-letter strategy, evidence preservation, and structuring business decisions to win the dispute before it is filed.
Trial-court litigation — in federal and state courts nationwide, from emergency injunctive relief through summary judgment and trial, with dedicated discovery counsel for document-heavy cases. See our resources on the standard of review for summary judgment in federal court and removing a case from state court to federal court.
Arbitration and mediation — commercial and consumer arbitrations under AAA, JAMS, and contract-specific regimes — including a pending consumer-privacy arbitration and a recent B2B arbitration — and settlement strategy informed by having tried and arbitrated these disputes to conclusion.
Class-action defense — consumer and commercial class actions, drawing on our antitrust class-action defense practice; see Appealing a Class Action Certification Order under Rule 23(f) and the jurisdictional requirements of the Class Action Fairness Act.
Appeals — we brief and argue our own appeals and take on appeals of other firms’ trial results; see our Appellate Litigation practice and Three Reasons To Hire An Appellate Lawyer.
Co-counsel and outside general counsel — we partner with referring employment, IP, and corporate lawyers on the litigation their matters produce. See our co-counsel approach and What Can Your Friendly Antitrust Lawyer Do for You?

The Antitrust Edge

Why hire antitrust lawyers for a commercial case? Because the disputes we handle are usually competition disputes in commercial-claim clothing — and the cross-training pays in both directions. Market definition, competitive effects, and exclusion are our native concepts, so we see leverage in a distribution dispute or a trade-secret raid that a generalist reads past. We know when a commercial case contains an antitrust claim worth pleading (or an antitrust counterclaim worth fearing), when an injunction someone asks for would itself restrain trade, and how to tell a competition story that makes a judge care about your contract case. If your dispute is with a competitor, over a market, or about who gets to compete, that fluency is not decoration. It is the case.

Analysis and Resources from Bona Law

More at The Antitrust Attorney Blog and in our Legal Resources library.

Frequently Asked Questions

What kinds of commercial disputes does Bona Law handle?

Breach of contract and business torts, partnership and fiduciary disputes, trade-secret and restrictive-covenant litigation, false advertising and Lanham Act claims, unfair competition, civil RICO, consumer-privacy claim campaigns, class-action defense, and government enforcement actions targeting business practices — in federal and state courts, arbitration, and on appeal.

Do you represent plaintiffs or defendants?

Both. We prosecute claims for businesses that have been harmed and defend companies and executives that have been sued — frequently in the same subject areas, which sharpens our judgment on both sides.

Why hire an antitrust boutique for a commercial case?

Because most complex commercial disputes are competition disputes underneath — and antitrust lawyers are trained to see market structure, leverage, and exclusion. That fluency changes how the case is pled, discovered, and told to a judge or arbitrator. It also means that if your case contains a real antitrust claim (or exposure), we identify it early rather than after the pleadings close.

Do you handle commercial arbitrations?

Yes. We are currently representing a consumer-products company in arbitration, and we defended a software company through parallel court and arbitration proceedings, including an arbitration that resolved a multi-year contract dispute by denying the adversary’s most significant claims.

Can you take over a case on appeal, or join as co-counsel?

Yes. We regularly join matters as appellate counsel or as co-counsel with referring firms — see our Appellate Litigation practice and co-counsel approach.

Contact Us

Bona Law represents companies, owners, and executives in complex commercial litigation across the United States, from offices in San Diego, New York, Dallas, Detroit, and Minneapolis. If your business faces a dispute, or needs to start one: