In a series of recent actions, the SEC has demonstrated its aggressive approach toward cryptocurrency regulation and enforcement. In the following guest post, John Reed Stark, President of John Reed Stark Consulting and former Chief of the SEC’s Office of Internet Enforcement, takes a detailed look at the SEC’s recent actions and considers the actions’ implications. A version of this article originally appeared on Securities Docket. I would like to thank John for his willingness to allow me to publish his article on this site. 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 John’s article. Continue Reading Guest Post: The SEC Triples Down on its Cryptocurrency Crackdown
Most primary D&O insurance policies are written on a global basis, meaning that the policy’s coverage will respond to claims wherever they arise, anywhere in the world. However, in recent years, as a result of tax, regulatory, indemnification, and currency questions, both insurance buyers and insurers have become concerned about the potential need for companies to have locally admitted policies in place in foreign jurisdictions where the companies have operations. The question about whether or not a company should have a local policy has become a perennial issue. In an October 16, 2019 post on Woodruff Sawyer’s blog entitled “Foreign Subsidiaries and D&O Insurance: Are you Prepared to Place?” (
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D&O insurance policies sometimes contain Major Shareholder Exclusions, precluding coverage for claims brought by shareholders’ with ownership percentages above a certain specified ownership threshold. But when is the shareholder’s ownership percentage to be determined – at the time of policy inception or at the time of the claim? This issue was among the D&O insurance coverage question presented in a recent case before the Third Circuit. The appellate court, applying Delaware law, found that the exclusionary language involved was ambiguous, and therefore resolved the issue in the policyholder’s assignee’s favor. As discussed below, the appellate court’s ruling is interesting in a number of different respects.
Whistleblowing has a long and respected tradition in the United States. In more recent times, whistleblowing and its protections have been part of several legislative schemes, including, for example, the creation in the Dodd-Frank Act of the SEC Whistleblower Program. The recent whistleblower complaint about President Trump’s July 2019 phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, underscores the continued important role of whistleblowing in the our political and business culture. As the events surrounding the recent whistleblowing complaint also show, whistleblowing is often regarded as a provocative act, and that, at a minimum, whistleblowing can be highly divisive.
Just about everyone who has been active in the D&O insurance arena for a while knows that every now and then one industrial segment or another will suddenly find itself in the midst of a securities litigation blitz. Years ago after the Internet bubble burst, it was the dot com companies. Further back than that, as at least some of us can remember, there were all of the failed banks in the S&L Crisis (and, again, in the wake of the global financial crisis). More recently, companies in the opioid pharmaceuticals space have 
The insured vs. insured exclusion is a standard exclusion in most management liability insurance policies. The exclusion precludes coverage for claims brought by one insured against another. The IvI exclusions in most management liability insurance policies typically include a number of exceptions to the exclusion preserving coverage for claims that otherwise would be excluded. In a recent decision, a Texas intermediate appellate court found that the IvI exclusion in an investment management firm’s policy did not preclude coverage for an arbitration award because the underlying dispute arose out of an employment practices claim and therefore the dispute – including even the derivative claims the claimant asserted in the arbitration – came within the exclusion’s coverage carve-back for wrongful employment practices claims. As discussed below, the court’s opinion has a number of interesting features. 
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D&O insurance policyholders sometimes bridle when the insurers take steps to try to rein in burgeoning defense expense. In that situation, the D&O insurers will often try to remind the policyholder that because defense expense erodes the limit of liability, it is in everyone’s interest for defense expense to be monitored closely. An unusual coverage action in the Western District of New York reversed the usual concerns about insurer defense cost control. The policyholder sued its D&O insurer for breach of contract, bad faith, and intentional infliction of emotional distress not for failing to pay defense costs or full defense costs, but rather for allowing the policyholder’s defense expenses incurred in an underlying criminal action to exhaust the applicable limit of liability. While it is hardly a surprise that a court concluded that an insurer that paid out its full limits cannot be held liable for breach of contract – much less bad faith or infliction of emotional distress –there are still a number of interesting aspects to this dispute and to the court’s ruling.