Enforcing a supply agreement for a manufacturer

A buyer stopped ordering two years into a five-year volume commitment, leaving a manufacturer with idle tooling and a new production line.

The client, a family-owned parts maker in central Ohio, had expanded its plant on the strength of the agreement. When orders fell to zero, the buyer argued that a quality clause gave it the right to walk away. Our first task was to test that argument against the contract language, the inspection records and two years of emails.

We built a detailed timeline of every shipment, inspection and complaint, then showed that the quality concerns were raised only after the buyer found a cheaper supplier. We filed in Franklin County, moved quickly for the production of the buyer's internal sourcing documents, and kept the door open to mediation from the first week. The client kept running its other lines throughout, and its owners spent less than a day a month on the case.

Once the sourcing documents were produced, the buyer agreed to mediate. The parties reached a structured resolution before trial that covered the unpaid commitment and a transition period for the tooling. The terms remain confidential.

• Contract read the way a court would read it, before any filing
• Targeted document requests instead of broad, expensive discovery
• Mediation kept available at every stage of the case
• Business operations protected while the dispute ran

Illustrative case study for a fictional firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.