Business and commercial litigation is the broad category for disputes between companies, partners, and their principals -- breach of fiduciary duty, tortious interference, unfair competition, business fraud, and partnership or shareholder conflicts. What distinguishes it is not a single doctrine but the frequent stacking of claims: the same course of dealing often supports a contract claim, a fiduciary-duty claim, an interference claim, and a statutory unfair-competition claim at once, each with different elements, remedies, and defenses. Plaintiffs plead in the alternative to hedge, and the strategic art lies in which theory carries the case.

Fiduciary-duty claims sit at the center because they unlock remedies contract law does not -- disgorgement, constructive trusts, and sometimes punitive damages -- while demanding proof of a special relationship of trust. Tortious-interference claims police the boundary between hard-nosed competition and wrongful conduct, requiring a valid relationship, the defendant's knowledge of it, intentional and improper interference, and resulting harm. Because the parties are usually ongoing enterprises with reputations, banking relationships, and future dealings at stake, these disputes carry business consequences that extend well beyond the judgment itself.

The stacked-claims structure is itself the strategy: each theory offers a different remedy and a different defense, so parties negotiate against a menu of exposures rather than one number. Fiduciary claims raise disgorgement and punitive tail risk that pulls settlements up, while interference claims live or die on the improper-means showing that separates lawful competition from a tort. Because litigants are ongoing businesses, reputational and relationship costs often move the settlement window as much as the legal merits.