In the following guest post, Karen Boto, Legal Director at the Clyde & Co. law firm, takes a look at the unusual circumstances that have recently come to light in connection with the cryptocurrency trading platform Quadriga, as well as the insurance issues that the circumstances might involve. I would like to thank Karen for allowing me to publish her guest post. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is Karen’s article.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Cryptocurrencies — A Quandary for Quadriga
As was the case in 2017, there were relatively few larger securities class action lawsuit settlements during 2018, compared to prior years. As reported in latest large securities class action lawsuit settlement report from ISS Securities Class Action Services (ISS), there were only four settlements in 2018 that were large enough to make the list of all time large settlements; while the four settlements making the top 100 list is above the only two cases that made the list in 2017, the 2018 total was still below most years’ totals since 2008. The ISS report, entitled “The Top 100 U.S. Class Action Settlements of All Time (as of December 31, 2017)” can be found 
As I have previously noted, 2018 was another extraordinary year for U.S. securities class action litigation, as filings overall remained at near-historical rates. One of the significant contribution factors to this development was the substantial number of securities suits filed against life sciences companies. The number and significance of the securities suits filed against life sciences companies is detailed in a February 6, 2019 report from the Dechert law firm entitled “Dechert Survey: Developments in U.S. Securities Fraud Class Actions Against Life Sciences Companies: 2018 Edition” (
In an interesting recent decision, a court rejected two defenses a Financial Institution Bond insurer asserted in denying coverage for a bank’s losses arising from a $3.6 million loan extended in reliance on documents that proved to have been forged. District Court of Arizona Judge G. Murray Snow, applying Arizona law, rejected the bond insurer’s arguments that the loss did not trigger one of the bond’s insuring agreements and that the notice prejudice rule did not apply to the bond’s coverage. The court’s January 4, 2019 decision can be found 
It is extremely rare for securities class action lawsuits to go all the way through to a jury verdict. Since 1996, there have been 
The number of federal court securities class action lawsuit filings remained “near record levels” during 2018, according to the latest report published by Cornerstone Research in conjunction with the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse. State court securities lawsuit filings, detailed in the report, drove securities class action litigation filing activity to even higher levels during 2018, arguably to the highest levels ever. According to the report, the likelihood of a U.S.-listed company getting hit with a securities suit was higher in 2018 than it has ever been. Driven by the sheer volume of litigation and the number of lawsuits against larger companies, the 2018 securities suit filings represented an aggregate market capitalization loss of over $1 trillion. The Cornerstone Research report, entitled “Securities Class Action Filings: 2018 Year in Review,” can be found 
During 2017 and 2018, plaintiffs’ lawyers filed a number of securities class action lawsuits against companies that had experienced data breaches. Among the highest profile of these cases was the securities lawsuit filed in 2017 against the credit rating firm, Equifax, which in September 2017 announced that hackers had breached its consumer database and accessed millions of records containing personally identifiable information. On January 28, 2019, in a ruling that will be closely analyzed in connection with the several other recently filed data breach-related securities lawsuits, Northern District of Georgia Judge Thomas W. Thrash, Jr. entered an order granting in part and denying in part the defendants’ motion to dismiss. A copy of the January 28 order can be found