In a January 4, 2010 order (here), Southern District of Texas Judge Nancy Atlas held that an insurance broker’s Professional Liability Insurance insurer must defend the broker and one of its employees in connection with claims arising out of the Stanford Group fraud.
Background
The Bowen Miclette & Britt insurance brokerage and
In an earlier post (here), I discussed legislation that Senator Arlen Specter introduced in July 2009 to legislatively overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Stoneridge and allow private actions for aiding and abetting liability. Though this proposed legislation is a matter for serious concern, there was always the possibility that given everything
Among perennial D&O insurance issues are questions whether policy coverage is available for defense expenses incurred in connection with investigative costs, subpoenas and the costs associated with special litigation committees. A December 30, 2009 decision in the coverage lawsuit brought by MBIA against its D&O insurers considered all of these recurring issues, and reached some
Securities class action lawsuit filings were "down sharply" according to the annual study of securities class action litigation released jointly today by the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse and Cornerstone Research. The full report can be found here and the January 5, 2010 press release accompanying the report can be found here.
2009 was an eventful year, with significant developments across a wide variety of economic, financial, judicial and legislative fronts. With the arrival of the New Year, it seems appropriate to take a look back at the past year’s most significant D&O developments.
So, in the finest tradition of year-end punditry, here is The D&O
What a difference a year makes. Just 12 months ago, the subprime and credit crisis litigation wave was in full spate, and the onslaught of Madoff and other Ponzi scheme cases had just begun to surge. And while both of these lawsuit filing trends continued well into 2009, by year’s end both of these phenomena
Broadcom Corporation, which previously settled its options backdating related derivative suit for $118 million, announced on December 29, 2009 (here) that it had settled the separate options backdating related securities class action lawsuit pending against the company and certain of its directors and officers in exchange for its agreement to pay $160.5
In a December 28, 2009 press release (here), the plaintiffs’ lawyers announced the settlement of the Comverse Technology options backdating-related derivative lawsuit. This derivative lawsuit settlement is separate from, but related to, the previously announced $225 million settlement of the Comverse Technology options backdating-related securities class action lawsuit (about which refer here).The
Beazer Homes has announced in its December 22, 2009 filing on Form 8-K (here) that it has settled the subprime-related shareholder’s derivative lawsuit that had been filed against the company, as nominal defendant, and certain of its directors and officers. According to the filing, the case has been settled in recognition of the
Since the sole remaining Friday in December is also Christmas Day, the seven banks the FDIC closed last Friday night may represent the last bank failures of 2009. Of course, there is no legal requirement that Friday is the only day of the week on which the FDIC can close a bank. The FDIC could