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Banking & Lender Litigation
Loan enforcement, guaranties, workouts, and the disputes that follow a default, from either side of the table.
What These Disputes Involve
Banking and lender litigation covers disputes arising from commercial lending relationships (enforcement of loans and guaranties, disputes over collateral and security interests, workouts and restructurings, foreclosure, and claims that a lender itself acted improperly).
Most of these disputes begin the same way: a business stops performing on a loan, and both sides have to decide quickly whether to negotiate or to enforce. That decision is usually more consequential than anything that follows, and it is frequently made without either side having had the documents properly reviewed.
What We Handle
Loan enforcement
Actions on notes, security agreements, and defaults, for lenders and against them.
Personal guaranty claims
Enforcement and defense, including challenges to scope, formation, and continuing liability.
Collateral and security interests
Perfection, priority, and disputes between competing secured parties.
Workouts and forbearance
Negotiated restructurings, forbearance agreements, and the terms that decide what happens if they fail.
Commercial foreclosure
Real property and personal property enforcement.
Lender liability claims
Where a borrower alleges the lender itself acted improperly (brought and defended).
Sound familiar?
What Each Side Usually Gets Wrong
These disputes are more symmetrical than either party believes at the outset.
Enforcing before checking whether the security is properly perfected
Assuming a personal guaranty is unavoidable rather than examining its scope
Treating a forbearance as a formality rather than a negotiation
Signing a forbearance agreement containing waivers and admissions they did not read
Underestimating lender liability exposure created during workout discussions
Waiting until enforcement has begun to seek advice, when options have already narrowed
Moving on collateral without confirming priority against other claimants
Disposing of or moving collateral, which converts a commercial problem into a worse one
Who does this work
Jordan W Gerheim
Commercial litigation including lender and borrower disputes, alongside the transactional work these relationships arise from.
Benjamin H. Kilborn, Jr.
Financing and lender negotiation from the in-house and transactional side, including real estate development finance.
Cost and related pages
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Frequently Asked Questions
I signed a personal guaranty. Am I simply liable?
Not automatically. Guaranties vary considerably in scope (some are limited in amount or duration, some cover only specific obligations, and some contain conditions that were not satisfied). There are also formation and modification arguments where the underlying loan changed materially without the guarantor's agreement. It is worth having the document examined before conceding.
Should we take the forbearance agreement the bank offered?
Possibly, but read it properly first. Forbearance agreements routinely include acknowledgments of the debt, waivers of defenses and claims, and releases of the lender (all of which may be reasonable in exchange for genuine breathing room, and all of which are permanent). What you give up should be proportionate to what you get.
What is lender liability?
A claim that the lender itself acted improperly, through the way it exercised control over a borrower's business, its conduct during workout discussions, or its handling of the loan relationship. These claims are not easy and are frequently overstated by borrowers, but they are real, and lenders create the exposure more often than they realize during informal workout conversations.
Do you act for banks or for borrowers?
Both, depending on how the matter arrives. Having argued both sides is genuinely useful. A lender benefits from counsel who knows what a borrower will attack, and a borrower benefits from counsel who knows what a lender is willing to do. We will tell you immediately if a conflict prevents us acting.
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Before the Default Becomes an Enforcement
Book a Risk-Free Strategy Session and send us the loan documents. There are usually more options at this stage than there will be next month.