Business and Commercial Litigation
In commercial litigation, the outcome at trial may not be the final result. An appeal can overturn a judgment, affecting a company’s financial obligations, contract rights and the precedent that shapes future disputes. The consequences can extend beyond the case, because a single appellate ruling can affect the interpretation of a business’s other agreements. Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors is retained for the commercial appeals that decide those questions. Companies bring the Firm the judgments that matter most, and the Firm challenges or defends them with the tenacity it brings to trial.
The Firm's clients run from founder-led businesses to Fortune 500 corporations and major nonprofits, and what they ask for varies: reversal of an adverse verdict, vacatur of an excessive damages award, interlocutory review of a class certification order under Rule 23(f), a challenge to an arbitration award, or the defense of a judgment an opponent is determined to overturn. The Firm pursues each with the same resolve, and it engages while the trial record is still being built, because the arguments available on appeal are set by what was preserved below. By the time judgment enters, the appeal is already taking shape.
This is advocacy a litigation-only firm can sustain. Brewer neither papers deals nor advises on them; its focus is entirely on litigation. Its trial and appellate lawyers are supported by in-house accountants, economists and investment bankers who take apart damages models and expert methodologies with the rigor a reviewing court expects, by an investigative group built from former FBI agents and intelligence professionals, and by communications professionals who manage the reputational weight of a defining dispute. Few boutiques bring that combination to an appeal. Brewer has brought it for four decades.
Featured Business Appellate Victory
In National Rifle Association v. Under Wild Skies, Inc., Brewer represented the National Rifle Association against Under Wild Skies, Inc., which claimed more than $20 million. A jury found for the NRA on Under Wild Skies' anticipatory breach claims, and the trial court refused a jury instruction based on the doctrine of adequate assurance. The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed on May 29, 2025, holding that under Virginia law a repudiation must be clear, absolute and unequivocal and must cover the entire performance, and expressly declining to adopt the doctrine of adequate assurance into Virginia contract law, which it described as a policy decision more appropriately left to the legislature. One appeal protected the verdict and settled the rule for every contract governed by that state.
Business and commercial appeals are one dimension of the Firm's Appellate practice, which carries the most consequential disputes through to the courts that decide them.