D&O Insurance Myths (Part 1)
Blogging made him both the Pope and the Tom Hanks of D&O insurance - Legally Contented Podcast
D&O Insurance: Better to Have it And Not Need it Than Need it And Not Have it
ESG is All The Rage, but How Does It Intersect with the D&O and RWI Insurance Markets?
Has the SPAC Bubble Burst? Lessons Learned From the Early Days of SPAC Mania
Smoother Sailing or Choppy Waters: What Lies Ahead for the 2022 D&O Market?
Takeaways From Recent Claims Against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook – Mitigating the Heightened Risk of Privacy Suits Against Individual Directors and Officers
Wait, are we related? Well, that depends on the facts and circumstances of each Claim
Don’t Step on a Crack in the SPAC/deSPAC Insurance Claim Process
The Intersection of Insurance and Bankruptcy – Part 2
NGE On Demand: Insurance and Indemnity Issues for Family Offices with Angela Elbert
The Brave New Frontier of Securing D&O Insurance for SPACs and deSPACs
NGE On Demand: Insurance Issues in Bankruptcy with Jason Frye
The D&O Renewal Market: Will the Wild Ride of Premium Increases, Stretched Capacity and Restrictive Terms Continue?
On-Demand Webinar | Insurance Issues Faced by Employers in Times of COVID-19
Internal Investigations: The Impact of the Yates Memo, the FCPA Unit Pilot Program and Recent Legal Decisions
The Intersection of Cyber and D&O Coverage
Is Private/Non-Profit D&O Coverage Under Priced?
Halliburton: Good for the Plaintiffs’ Bar?
D&O in Brazil and Latin America
A Delaware Superior Court, applying Delaware law, has held that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) request to toll the statute of limitations did not constitute a “Securities Claim” under a D&O...more
On June 17 and 18, DealFlow Events held its annual SPAC conference, a long-standing gathering of key players in the SPAC ecosystem. I was once again invited to speak at the event, which provided an opportunity to explore...more
For many years, plaintiffs’ lawyers have used Section 220 requests to harass Delaware corporations. Typically, books and records demands are intrusive and annoying—and nothing more. However, in some cases, plaintiffs have...more
The United States District Court for the Southern District of California, applying California law, has held that an exception within an insured vs. insured (I v. I) exclusion of a D&O policy restored coverage for a suit...more
Foreign private issuers (FPIs) are non-US companies that are traded on US exchanges. They have access to US capital markets even though FPIs are subject to less-stringent disclosure requirements. A good question to ask is...more
Delaware has long been the leading jurisdiction in which companies incorporate. According to Delaware’s published statistics from 2023...more
Derivative suits are a topic of discussion that continues to challenge directors, officers, and insurers alike. The issue is particularly fraught for individual directors and officers because Delaware-incorporated companies...more
In 2024, biotechnology companies were the second most targeted industry for securities class action litigation, according to the D&O Databox™, Woodruff Sawyer’s proprietary database of securities class action suits. The...more
The 2025 PLUS D&O Symposium brought together leading voices in the professional liability space to discuss the evolving risks corporate leaders are facing. I was privileged to moderate the panel on securities litigation, a...more
In this last article in his three-part series, my partner and securities litigator Walker Newell looked at motion to dismiss trends in the Central District of California, which covers Los Angeles and Orange County. The CD...more
The SPAC market is finally making a comeback. As we enter a period of the long-awaited SPAC revival, some liability dangers persist. Two common questions that keep being raised by our clients are: How much liability...more
A Delaware court recently found for the policyholders in determining that a directors and officers (D&O) liability policy covered the settlement of an underlying action alleging violations of the Securities Exchange Act of...more
On February 4, 2025, the Delaware Supreme Court, sitting en banc, determined that the Wrongful Acts alleged in a securities class action against Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. had a “meaningful linkage” with the Wrongful Acts...more
In securities class actions, the motion to dismiss is the key event. If the company wins, the case goes away and costly discovery is avoided. If shareholders win, a significant settlement in the future is likely. In these...more
On January 3, 2025, Judge Paul R. Wallace of the Superior Court for the State of Delaware granted plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment in a directors and officers (“D&O”) insurance denial case against. Harman Int’l Indus....more
After a two-and-a-half-year lull in SPAC activity, the second half of 2024 brought glimmers of sunshine to the otherwise gloomy world of SPACs. New SPAC IPO activity picked up pace in the summer of 2024 and continued to grow,...more
In a significant victory for policyholders, the Delaware Superior Court rejected three insurers' attempts to apply their Directors and Officers Liability ("D&O") policies' so-called "bump-up" exclusion to bar coverage for...more
Cooley’s securities litigation + enforcement group continued to share key insights on key cases and developments in securities litigation throughout the spring and summer. They highlighted important decisions in Delaware...more
In private securities class actions, the motion to dismiss is critical. A victory can mean a quick and relatively inexpensive conclusion to litigation. A loss can mean many months of expensive and intrusive discovery. This...more
The streak of good news in D&O litigation risk ends this year, with a rise in class action filings and bigger settlements. But the D&O market is still soft, so staying on top of the evolving risk landscape will help you...more
In a win for Wiley’s client, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held, under Wisconsin law, that an exception for settlements of “Inadequate Consideration Claims” barred coverage for the insured’s...more
Tumultuous, exasperating, difficult, nerve-wracking, and frustrating are all apt descriptions of the 2022 SPAC market. We’ve summarized some of its ups and downs in our year in review blog post from October and have touched...more
Good news: The downward trend of securities class actions against public companies continues as we look at the first half of 2022. If the trend holds for the second half of 2022, the rate of securities class action litigation...more
On March 16, 2022, in a unanimous decision the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed a Superior Court ruling that a securities class action and a later-filed opt out action were related claims, and thus the subsequent action was...more
In 2021, 182 securities class actions were filed against issuers of stock listed on US exchanges. This statistic means that the total number of annual filings in 2021 was down 13% compared to 2020. As highlighted in our...more