Conflict management

Thuis Partners can act as your “sparring partner” for risk management and conflict management. By that, we mean that we have the expertise for every conceivable form of conflict management. This enables us to collaborate with you to draw up a realistic strategic plan for any conflict (or risk of a conflict) and carry it out with the speed required. We work with you to resolve disputes effectively.

Negotiations

Negotiating demands experience and skill, and our lawyers are experienced negotiators. Besides the theory behind the various methods of negotiation, they are familiar, above all, with the actual practice. For us, maximising your negotiating position by adopting realistic and well-argued legal positions is a permanent objective. It goes without saying that we don’t lose sight of the final objective.

Legal proceedings

Negotiations sometimes get nowhere (at least for the time being) and then recourse to the courts is unavoidable, or at least strategically desirable. And a number of procedural options are reserved exclusively to the courts, for example seizure, a petition for insolvency, etc.). Thuis Partners has one of the largest litigation practices in Limburg. We have extensive experience in all our areas of expertise, not only in the district and sub‑district courts but also the courts of appeal, the Enterprise Division, and – in cooperation with cassation lawyers – the Supreme Court. We have particular experience of proceedings involving significant financial interests, which generally require a different approach and strategy. We are familiar with the management of proceedings of that kind, which are often very threatening for the business concerned, and which often involve numerous parties and receive a great deal of media attention.

Mediation

Proceedings can severely disrupt relations between parties. There are situations when a dispute must be resolved but a good relationship needs to be maintained. Examples might be an employment conflict with a valuable employee, a divorce, a conflict between shareholders within a (family) company, or a dispute between companies that have a customer-supplier relationship, in which they are dependent on one another. In such cases, conflict resolution under the guidance of a mediator is often the best solution. Our senior mediators are Fokje Kuiper (disputes in the field of personal and family law), Karina Lemmens (work situations, health care, and family businesses), and Dimitry Aertssen (disputes within a legal entity or a partnership, commercial disputes between businesses).

Arbitration

Arbitration is a form of dispute resolution that in certain circumstances offers a number of advantages:

• the proceedings are not public and therefore remain confidential;
• the arbitrators don’t just have legal expertise but are also often experts on the subject matter of the dispute;
• arbitration is relatively fast (whether an appeal will be possible must be agreed on).

Our lawyers have the necessary expertise and experience of arbitration, in particular with regard to building construction cases, corporate law disputes, disputes within partnerships, and all kinds of commercial contracts. In addition to having experience on the litigation side of arbitration, Eugène Rosier and Nico van der Peet also act as arbitrators themselves. Eugène Rosier is an arbitrator with the Netherlands Arbitration Institute in Rotterdam.

Binding opinion

Securing a binding opinion is an efficient means of resolving a dispute. In a settlement agreement (concluded either before or after the occurrence of a conflict) the parties agree to conform to the opinion of one or more binding advisers. The proceedings usually comprise a written phase followed by an oral hearing and the issuing of the binding opinion. We have extensive experience as a binding advisor, but also in conducting proceedings in the context of a binding opinion.