Litigation & Dispute Resolution

With a 30-year heritage in Corporate & Commercial Litigation, we can manage a corporate entity’s entire litigation portfolio – not only in Nigeria but across Africa. This specialised service offers a great advantage to JEE’s clients as we can immediately deploy personnel throughout Africa to manage crisis situations. Significant deals include: 

• Successfully managing the entire litigation portfolio of an international construction company, including defending it in +200 different types of cases in various courts and tribunals all over Nigeria; and 

• Successfully managing the entire litigation portfolio of a leading oil and gas company, which has involved +150 different cases all over Nigeria, including the Niger-Delta region. 

JEE has an admirable track record in managing all aspects of contentious and non-contentious employment and labour law disputes for a variety of high-profile clients. Our services include: 

• Advising on a wide range of employment and labour matters involving employee welfare and benefits;  

• Boardroom and executive management severance claims disputes;  

• Bollective bargaining issues (including negotiations with and defence of enforcement actions against trade-unions);  

• Redundancies, dismissals and terminations;  

• Occupational health and safety;  

• Employment contracts and employees’ handbooks/manuals;  

• Employee compensation;  

• Enforcement actions involving breach of trade secrets and restrictive covenants;  

• Judicial review actions;  

• Employment issues in corporate restructuring transactions; and 

• Out-sourcing related matters, amongst many more. 

JEE’s Dispute Resolution team has participated in many of Nigeria’s landmark property cases. This, combined with our knowledge of modern real-estate business, offers a great advantage to our clientele. Our services include matters regarding: 

• Property ownership; 

• Construction/property development contracts; 

• Structural and environmental damage; and 

• Commercial property management and services agreements.  

JEE advises and represents Africa’s leading corporations and multinationals in complex tax-related litigation across all legal institutions, including disputes before the Federal Tax Appeal Tribunal, Joint Tax Board, State Courts and Tribunals.  

Our tax litigation practice includes successfully challenging situations of multiple taxations in different parts of Nigeria, and challenging and defending improper tax claims and assessments – including taxes imposed by Federal, State and Local Government authorities and/or their agencies. 

JEE provides focused and timely commercial advice and risk analysis on complex domestic and cross-border insolvencies. Our excellent track record in this area includes: 

• Recovery of debts (including secured and unsecured, and/or trade debts); 

• Risk assets recovery and collateral review advisory; 

• Enforcement and foreclosure of securities; and 

• Asset tracing and white-collar crime. 

We also have specialist experience regarding asset preservation and enforcement matters, including enforcement of foreign Judgments and foreign Arbitration Awards. We have achieved significant recoveries by developing strategies to obtain and/or exercise powers over the assets of debtor-defendants. 

JEE has decades of expertise in Telecommunications & Information Technology under the expert guidance of our Head of Department for Litigation & Dispute Resolution, Obafemi Agaba. Obafemi was a pioneer member of Nigeria’s Panel of Neutrals (Arbitrators and Mediators), which was established by the Nigerian Communications Commission at the dawn of expansion of Nigeria’s telecommunications sector in 2001/2002. 

JEE’s team is well positioned to manage Telecoms and IT-related disputes, including: 

• Co-location disputes; 

• Interconnectivity disputes; 

• Consumer protection claims; 

• Commercial contracts; 

• Cell site acquisition; 

• Community relations; and 

• Labour and employment, amongst others.  

We have vast experience in managing, prosecuting, and defending disputes pertaining to the management and operations of companies – including derivative actions and shareholders’ litigation – and have an enviable track record of settling company boardroom disputes with harmonious outcomes. 

JEE has the foremost Corporate Mergers & Acquisitions practice in Nigeria, with several blue-chip transactions to our credit. This has equipped our litigation team with the requisite knowledge and expertise to prepare necessary Court processes and obtain relevant Court orders and sanctions for the actualisation of corporate restructuring projects. These include: 

• Court-ordered meetings of shareholders of companies; 

• Sanctioning of Schemes of Merger & Acquisition; 

• Schemes of Arrangement; 

• Business Combinations; 

• Capital Reduction Schemes; and  

• Employee Trust Schemes, amongst others. 

JEE’s experienced and highly skilled Arbitration & Mediation team acts as Counsel to clients who are parties in arbitration proceedings and mediation processes, as well as presiding over disputes as Arbitrators and Mediators. Our team includes Fellows and Members of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, United Kingdom, and a pioneer Member of the Panel of Neutrals of the Lagos Multi-Door Court House, who presides over disputes as an Arbitrator. 

One recent JEE Arbitration & Mediation success includes instituting, prosecuting, and concluding a multi-million-dollar claims dispute on behalf of a Danish multinational brewing corporation at the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce? The award was entered in our favour. 

Arbitration & Mediation services 

• Initiating and defending contentious disputes before Arbitration Tribunals, including institutional and ad-hoc tribunals; 

• Enforcing Arbitral awards, whether issued by local or foreign arbitral tribunals; 

• Advising on, and drafting, arbitration clauses in commercial contracts; and  

• Representing clients in arbitration proceedings arising from: 

• labour and employment matters; 

• IP and domain name conflicts; 

• franchising disputes; 

• telecoms interconnectivity and co-location disputes; 

• construction/civil engineering disputes; 

• consumer and product liability disputes; and 

• trademark licensing disputes.