If you are a business owner, then you have certainly had employees handling some of your money or property before. It is a necessary part of being a business owner that you trust some of your business’s money to an employee, whether it is a clerk collecting money at the cash register or a high-level accountant or bookkeeper in charge of managing the business bank account. In any scenario, you may worry that one of your employees has stolen from you or embezzled money from your accounts. This is an all-too-common reality for business owners, so here are some questions to ask yourself to determine if you truly have a case ready for conversion.
What is Conversion?
In legalese, conversion is simply a tort that exposes you to liability for damages in a civil lawsuit. In other words, it means that an act was made that damaged another person and thus allows them to sue for the damages. This usually boils down to one person taking the property of someone else. It could be conversion if you own a business with valuable assets and someone purposefully interfered with them. In this scenario, if you cannot fully recover the assets as a result, or the interference caused harm to your business, you are rightfully owed damages in a conversion case in court.
Why Does Conversion Happen?
In any case of conversion, there is usually a person who was desperate enough to take from someone else. Otherwise, they were greedy enough to do so. In 20% of conversion cases, there’s over $1,000,000 in a loss for the business involved. Occupational fraud like this is a big deal. In fact, the average company loses about 5% of its total revenue annually to occupational fraud! Common conversion claims include theft, embezzlement, corruption, fraud, negligence, and even non-disclosure violations.
Does Your Case Qualify?
The most important question to ask yourself, or your Seattle conversion attorney, is whether your rights as an owner were violated for an extensive period of time or not. In other words, was the property that was taken from you and your business taken temporarily or not? It might sound like a silly question, but it makes a large difference in the case of conversion. If the owner’s rights were not obstructed for a long enough period of time, it may not qualify as conversion.
If you are confused as to whether or not you have a case for conversion, contact our Seattle attorney and get prepared.