Variations on Fraud

Fraud is one of the most common types of case in business litigation. These disputes typically arise when an individual steals from a company or misrepresents a product or service during a transaction.

There are specific legal complexities found in Wisconsin, such as the Economic Loss Doctrine. This doctrine maintains a “bright line” between contract law and tort law, which can make filing a fraud claim within a business context quite difficult.

Despite these hurdles, many cases simply come down to one party taking advantage of another. Even when individuals are operating in a professional capacity, they are still entitled to seek legal action if they have been victims of fraudulent behavior.

Learn more about Sean M. Sweeney here.

You can learn more about our Business Litigation practice as well as some of the specific kinds of case we work on, including High-States Commercial Litigation, Strategic Products Liability Defense, Trade-Secret Litigation and Corporate Shareholder or LLC Member Disputes.

TRANSCRIPT:

“I would say the second most common case that we see for business litigation are probably variations on fraud. And so it’s usually somebody has either stolen something from their company, or in a transaction somebody’s lied to somebody else about what the service they were selling or the product they were providing, and has committed fraud.

Now in Wisconsin it gets a little complicated because we have a thing called the Economic Loss Doctrine, which is this idea they’re trying to keep this bright line, the separation between contract and tort remedies. We call anything non-contract—the best way to think of it—you get hit by a car, you have personal injury, that’s a tort. But so is fraud. So are all these different things that are other conduct outside of the contract arena.

So it’s always tricky to bring a fraud case in a business context because you have to navigate a lot of those legal issues. But it’s still the most common thing we see is that somebody just took advantage of somebody else. And just because they were wearing a business hat while they were being taken advantage of doesn’t change the fact that you have a cause of action for fraud.”