In the following guest post, Peter S. Selvin, a partner with Beverly Hills, California based Ervin, Cohen & Jessup law firm where he chairs the firm’s insurance coverage and recovery practice, reviews two recent case decisions involving the question of whether or not D&O insurance policies apply to provide coverage for consumer protection claims arising from the sale or marketing of products. A version of this article previously published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal. I would like to thank Peter for allowing me to publish his article as a guest post 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 Peter’s article.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Are Consumer Protection or False Advertising Claims Covered by Insurance?
Yet another Delaware court has issued a noteworthy management liability insurance coverage opinion. In a detailed September 12, 2022 opinion in a dispute between Godiva Chocolatier and its management liability insurers over coverage for underlying consumer protection claims against the company, Delaware Superior Court Judge Mary M. Johnston rejected many – but not all — of the insurers’ coverage defenses. A copy of Judge Johnston’s opinion can be found 
Privately-held companies, on the one hand, and companies whose shares are public traded, on the other hand, face very different liability exposures. Because of these differences in liability exposures, the directors and officers liability insurance available for these types of entities varies – the D&O insurance form available for private companies is quite a bit different from the D&O insurance form available for public companies. A recent law firm memo took a brief look at the differences between the two forms of coverage. There some important additional considerations, that I discuss below.
One area of potential legal exposure facing corporate executives – including even executives of private companies – is the risk of liability under laws designed to protect competition, including (but definitely not limited to) state and federal antitrust laws. Claims asserting liability under these various legal provisions not only represent a significant liability exposure for corporate executives, but they also present a number of potentially significant issues when it comes to questions of coverage under the typical private company D&O insurance policy. As discussed below, a recent paper discussed a number of these issues; I discuss additional issues below, as well.
A frequently recurring claim that many companies face is a lawsuit brought by a competitor after the company hires the competitor’s former employee. Depending on how the competitor’s lawsuit is framed, these kinds of claims can be an awkward fit with the defendant company’s D&O insurance policy. A recent insurance coverage dispute in Delaware state court illustrates the kinds of coverage issues that can sometimes arise in connection with these claims. As discussed below, there are ways that D&O insurance policies can be revised to try to address at least some of the coverage issues. Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis’s May 2, 2018 in the insurance coverage litigation can be found 
Antitrust regulation and securities enforcement each involve entirely separate areas of the law. However, an increasingly frequent follow-on effect of a regulatory investigation for allegedly anticompetitive conduct is an ensuing class action lawsuit under the securities laws. A lawsuit recently filed in the Southern District of New York, which also has some unique characteristics all