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Kevin LaCroix

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Kevin M. LaCroix is an attorney and Executive Vice President, RT ProExec, a division of RT Specialty. RT ProExec is an insurance intermediary focused exclusively on management liability issues.

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The following guest post examines the resolution of class certification motions in securities class action lawsuits during 2025; considers the parties’ economic arguments in support of or in opposition to class certification; and analyzes the courts evaluation of those arguments. The article is written by Andrew Roper, Mame Maloney, Brendan Rudolph, and Ravi Sinha, Principals at The Brattle Group, and Aidan Kutner, an Associate at The Brattle Group. We would like to thank the authors for allowing us to publish their article as a guest post on our site. Here is the authors’ article.

Continue Reading Guest Post: Key Trends in 2025 Class Certification Decisions: Fraud-on-the-Market Under Fire

The D&O Diary is on assignment this week in Europe, with the first stop in the German city of Frankfurt. Frankfurt is the premier financial hub of continental Europe, serving as the seat of the European Central Bank and the heart of the German banking industry. I always enjoy visiting Frankfurt, but there was something about this visit in particular that made me reflect on how much my views about Germany have changed over the years — and how much I enjoy visiting Germany — as discussed below.

Continue Reading Frankfurt

One of the perennial management liability insurance coverage issues is whether a policy’s contractual liability exclusion precludes coverage for related tort claims filed alongside claims for breach of contract. Often, these issues turn on the specific wording of the exclusion involved. A recent insurance coverage decision from the Northern District of Illinois addressed these issues in the context of an underlying lawsuit involving both a breach of contract claim and a claim for tortious interference with contract. As discussed below, the court concluded, based on the specific language involved, that the exclusion did not preclude coverage for the tortious interference claim.

The Court’s March 31, 2026, opinion can be found here. An April 9, 2026 LinkedIn post about the court’s decision by Paul Curley of the Kaufman, Borgeest & Ryan law firm can be found here.

Continue Reading Contract Exclusion Does Not Bar Coverage for Tortious Interference Claim
Stephen Hourigan

In the following guest post, Stephen Hourigan presents his view that Delaware’s courts have reimagined the role of Corporate Boards’ Audit Committees, yet the D&O insurance underwriting approach has yet to catch up to these changes. Stephen is the Founder and CEO of Penguin AI. We would like to thank Stephen for allowing us to publish his article as a guest post on this site. Here is Stephen’s article.

Continue Reading Guest Post: The Audit Committee: D&O Underwriting is Behind Delaware Law

One of the interesting features of the rise of AI has been the advent of “AI-and” businesses – that is, businesses whose strategy is to apply AI tools to traditional business models. When “AI-and” business results fall short, securities litigation has sometimes followed. In the latest example of this kind of litigation, earlier this week a plaintiff shareholder filed a securities suit against Upstart Holdings, a company whose business model involves applying AI tools to traditional credit rating and lending services, after the results from the company’s AI-updated credit rating tool disappointed investors. A copy of the new Upstart Holdings complaint can be found here.

Continue Reading Lending Platform Hit with AI-Related Securities Suit

One of the more interesting recent developments in the world of directors’ and officers’ liability and insurance has been the rise of collective actions and mass actions outside the U.S. Class actions are of course a well-established part of the litigation scene in the U.S., but at least traditionally class, mass, or collective actions have been rare outside the U.S. However, as discussed in a December 29, 2025, memo from the Labaton Keller Sucharow law firm entitled “Global Class Action Litigation: Causes, Effects and What’s Next” (here) a variety of changes in a number of jurisdictions has led to an increase in collective litigation outside the U.S., a development that could have important future implications for potential D&O liability.

Continue Reading The Continuing Rise of Collective and Mass Actions Outside the U.S.

In an interesting decision analzing how a D&O run-off policy’s Subsequent Acts Exclusion operates, a New York federal district court has ruled that acts after the cut-off date that aren’t unlawful don’t preclude coverage for an underlying claim based on alleged misrepresentations made before the cut-off date. Judge Jed Rakoff’s March 13, 2026, decision in the case, applying New York law, can be found here. A March 18, 2026 post about the decision on the Pillsbury law firm’s Policyholder Pulse blog can be found here.

Continue Reading Later Acts that are Not “Wrongful” Don’t Bar D&O Run-Off Coverage
James Sterlin
Mike Newham

In the following guest post, James Sterling, Claims Counsel, Euclid Financial & Professional Risks, and Mike Newham, Partner, RPC, consider the economic and underwriting risks associated with the private credit markets. A version of this article previously was published on LinkedIn and on Euclid’s website. My thanks to James and Mike for allowing me to publish their article as a guest post on this site. Here is the authors’ article.

Continue Reading Guest Post: Private Credit – Risky Business?

Public company D&O insurance policies restrict “entity coverage” (that is, coverage for claims directly against the corporate entity, as opposed to those against individual directors and officers) to “Securities Claims.” If a claim against the company is not Securities Claim then there is no coverage for the company’s defense fees, settlements, and judgments. This obviously creates a huge incentive for the companies to try to show that the claims against them are Securities Claims – which, in turn, has spawned a great deal of coverage litigation addressing the question whether or not a particular corporate lawsuit is or not a Securities Claim.

In the latest example of these kinds of coverage disputes, last week the District of Maryland, applying Maryland law, held that an antitrust claim filed against a corporate entity was not a securities claim within the meaning of the applicable policy – not because the antitrust claim was not “Securities Claims,” but rather because the dispute did not involve alleged transactions in the securities of the company or its subsidiaries. The Maryland court’s March 24, 2026, opinion can be found here.

Continue Reading D&O Insurance: Not a “Securities Claim” if No Securities of the “Company” Involved

In the months since the current Trump administration first announced the so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs, some companies have struggled to deal with the tariffs’ economic impacts, and in at least some cases, companies’ tariff-related problems have led to securities class action litigation (as discussed, most recently, for example, here). In the latest example of this phenomenon, earlier this week the social media company Pinterest was hit with a securities suit after the company announced that tariff-related headwinds had caused its business partners to cut back on advertising on the company’s site. A copy of the March 30, 2026, Pinterest complaint can be found here.

Continue Reading Tariff-Related Securities Suit Hits Social Media Platform Pinterest