In just six months, Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani Senior Counsel Anastasia Osbrink brokered a settlement in a complex commercial dispute involving three corporate entities, resulting in a net gain to the firm’s out-of-state client and a restored commercial relationship between all three parties.
The firm’s Georgia-based client, a facility security services company, entered into a professional services agreement (“PSA”) to protect the Northern California facility of a renewable energy engineering firm. As permitted by the PSA, the client subcontracted that work to a California-based security firm.
When one of the engineering firm’s well-known vendors drove onto the premises and had an accident after hours, the engineering firm demanded the firm’s client indemnify it for the alleged damages and began withholding payments on the PSA, which, in turn, had a cascading effect on the client’s ability to pay the subcontractor. The subcontractor then filed suit against the firm’s client in Kern County Superior Court.
Ms. Osbrink immediately filed a cross-action against the subcontractor and the engineering firm. Simultaneously, she opened up discussions with both companies and proposed a business solution that resulted not only in a resolution of the entire action but one that resulted in a net gain in payments to the firm’s client while restoring the working relationships between all three parties.