LITIGATION TEAM – LA DÉFENSE

Precision. Advocacy. Resolution.

A Team Built for High-Stakes Disputes

Litigation at La Défense is positioned not merely as a legal service, but as a construct of strategic protection for investors, corporations, high-net-worth individuals, and cross-border commercial entities. The team’s defining strength lies in its ability to transform regulatory complexity into actionable dispute pathways. Whether operating before domestic courts, arbitration centres, specialized tribunals or ministerial review panels, La Défense consistently demonstrates a command of the law that translates into clarity, leverage, and tactical advantage.

In an era of intensified regulatory scrutiny, escalating compliance thresholds, and multi-jurisdiction enforcement demands, the firm’s litigation approach balances two imperatives: safeguarding immediate client exposure and structuring litigation outcomes for sustainable commercial continuity. This dual lens—judicial accuracy and commercial realism—ensures that dispute resolution is not an isolated remedy, but an instrument of long-term market positioning and risk insulation for the client.

Mastery Across Jurisdictions, Forums and Industry Sectors

La Défense’s litigation portfolio spans cross-border commercial contracts, EPC and FIDIC construction disputes, real estate and encumbrance claims, government revocation reviews, customs enforcement, IP litigation, defamation, insolvency and investment treaty mechanisms. The team regularly appears before:

• People’s Courts of all levels
• VIAC, SIAC, ICC, HKIAC, CIETAC arbitration panels
• Administrative review boards and ministerial inspection task forces
• Enforcement divisions and asset recovery authorities

This breadth is not a matter of volume, but of layered legal command. Arbitration language drafting, expert witness cross-examination, concurrency delay modelling in construction disputes, treaty-based enforcement defense, CISG interpretation in foreign trade litigation, and platform jurisdiction theory in digital defamation all represent areas where La Défense has demonstrated recurring excellence.

The team’s fluency in procedural nuance—limitation periods, admissibility rules, forum selection, interim relief, and enforcement challenge practice—allows for strategic anticipation. Clients benefit not merely from reactionary defense, but from proactive litigation architecture designed to minimize exposure before a dispute escalates into formal proceedings.

A Strategic, Evidence-Led Litigation Philosophy

At the heart of La Défense’s dispute practice is a disciplined evidence-driven methodology. Each matter begins with a factual excavation protocol, ensuring chain-of-custody integrity, admissibility compliance and digital forensics alignment. The team’s litigation memoranda are anchored in comparative case law, statutory interpretation and regulatory commentary.

Key elements of litigation strategy include:

• establishing procedural standing advantage early in the case
• mastering burden of proof allocation
• mapping counterparties’ liability thresholds
• designing settlement corridors without conceding legal narrative

The firm treats courtroom advocacy as a continuation of structured legal reasoning, not performance. Arguments are engineered to withstand judicial inquiry, arbitral scrutiny and appeals exposure. This intellectual discipline has allowed the team to redefine case posture in matters involving multi-billion asset freezes, high-value construction penalties, cross-border IP enforcement and administrative revocation reinstatement.

Disputes in Construction, Real Estate and International Trade

Particularly distinguished is the team’s record in building and infrastructure disputes. La Défense’s construction litigation capability integrates technical scheduling, FIDIC interpretation, valuation quantification, defect causation and extension of time (EOT) modelling. The firm’s landmark victories in EPC penalty mitigation, retention fund release, and wrongful termination adjudication reflect its ability to convert highly technical arguments into decisive judicial outcomes.

In real estate and commercial leasing litigation, La Défense has restored encumbrance priority, reversed unlawful cancellation, dismantled fraudulent lien registrations and enforced buy-back acceleration clauses. For cross-border trade, the team has invoked CISG to counter non-conformity allegations and has used Incoterms, GAFTA and ICC standards to challenge contamination liability and improper risk transfer claims.

This subject-matter mastery translates directly into negotiation leverage. Opposing counsel, tribunals and regulatory stakeholders recognize the depth with which La Défense articulates technical matrix disputes, enabling earlier settlements without commercial compromise where appropriate.

Government-Level Advocacy and Policy-Linked Disputes

In matters involving State decisions, administrative revocation and regulatory sanctioning, La Défense has demonstrated diplomacy balanced with legal precision. Advocacy before ministerial task forces, provincial authorities and inter-ministerial review councils reflects not only court-room intelligence but institutional literacy. The firm’s work in reinstatement petitions for major hotel and mixed-use developments set strategic precedent in investment protection under tightened land-use compliance.

This capability holds particular significance in the current legal environment where project suspensions, land repossession, and FDI compliance audits are increasingly frequent. The Litigation Team’s role here is not merely to challenge, but to interpret and bridge regulatory expectations, thereby transforming government scrutiny into clarified pathways for legal continuity.

Enforcement, Asset Recovery and Post-Judgment Strategy

Litigation at La Défense does not conclude with judgment. Post-award enforcement, recognition of foreign arbitral decisions, asset tracing, collateral execution and recovery litigation constitute a distinct expertise. The team has successfully navigated treaty-based recognition barriers, off-shore ownership structures, shell-entity asset protection and fraudulent conveyancing defenses.

By integrating cross-border banking protocols, customs enforcement powers and digital traceability, La Défense conducts enforcement not as administrative procedure, but as a targeted tactical phase of full-spectrum litigation.

A Team That Litigates with Commercial Purpose

The Litigation Team is driven by an approach that is legally uncompromising and commercially aware. Dispute outcomes are engineered to preserve not only legal rights but strategic relations, market positioning and financial integrity. In doing so, La Défense ensures that litigation ceases to be a disruptive event and instead becomes a mechanism of structural advantage.

Every dispute, from construction arbitration to foreign trade breach, is treated as a strategic inflection point where law, policy, finance and commercial negotiation converge. The team’s work is defined by this constant calibration—balancing advocacy with discretion, pressure with diplomacy, and legal narrative with commercial survival.

Through this philosophy, La Défense stands as not simply a litigation service provider, but a dispute architect. A shield, a negotiator, and when necessary, a decisive litigator operating at the highest level of legal discipline.