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A standard feature of virtually every commercial contract is a choice-of-law clause. The general perception is that these types of clauses help facilitate settlement and reduce litigation costs. There is, however, one type of contract the usually omits choice-of law-clauses – insurance policies. Throughout the insurance industry and across most lines of coverage, insurance policies lack choice of law clauses. The reasons why insurance policies omit provisions that are standard for virtually every other type of commercial contract is the subject of an interesting new paper from University of North Carolina Law Professor John F. Coyle, entitled “The Mystery of the Missing Choice-of-Law Clause.” Coyle’s paper raises a number of interesting questions, some of which may be relevant as some insurers consider the question of whether they many need to add choice of law clauses to their policies. A copy of Professor Coyle’s December 2, 2021 paper can be found here.
Continue Reading Why Don’t Insurance Policies Have Choice-of-Law Clauses?

In a November 30, 2021 opinion (here), a Delaware Superior Court judge, applying Delaware law, held that the later investigations of the insured policyholder by two regulatory agencies were unrelated to an earlier investigation of the company by one of the agencies. In making this “relatedness” determination, the court declined to apply the “fundamentally identical” standard that some Delaware courts have applied to relatedness issues, but instead applied a “meaningful linkage” test. Because relatedness disputes are so frequent, and because Delaware’s court increasingly are becoming the forum in which insurance disputes are addressed, this court’s adoption of the revised relatedness standard court have important implications.
Continue Reading D&O Insurance: Delaware Court Applied “Meaningful Linkage” Interrelated Claims Test

Several years ago, when it became clear that plaintiffs’ lawyers were going to file merger objection lawsuits in connection with essentially every M&A transaction, the D&O insurers responded by adding a separate, larger retention for M&A-related claims. The larger M&A-related claim retention quickly became pretty much a standard feature of public company D&O insurance policies. However, because the M&A claim retention is in many instances substantially larger than the retention that would otherwise apply, the question of whether the larger retention applies to a particular claim can be a significant one. In a recent case, the Delaware Superior Court addressed a D&O insurance coverage dispute in which, among other things, the insurers and the policyholder disagreed on whether the larger M&A-related claim retention applied to the underlying litigation. In an interesting November 23, 2021 opinion (here), Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis held that the larger M&A retention did not apply.
Continue Reading Court Holds Larger M&A-Related Retention Does Not Apply to Securities Claim

In the latest example of claimants seeking to assert the newly revitalized type of claim for breach of the duty of oversight against corporate boards, plaintiff shareholders have filed a derivative lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court against certain past and current directors of technology company SolarWinds, based on the massive cybersecurity incident involving the company’s software and systems discovered in December 2020. As discussed below, there are several interesting features of this lawsuit in light of recent developments involving claims for alleged breaches of the duty of oversight. A copy of the heavily redacted publicly available version of the plaintiffs’ complaint against the SolarWinds board can be found here.
Continue Reading Cybersecurity-Related Breach of the Duty of Oversight Claim Filed Against SolarWinds Board

In what is one of the largest derivative lawsuit settlements ever, and — according to the statement from one of the co-lead plaintiffs in the case — the largest settlement ever in Delaware of a Caremark/breach of the duty of oversight case, the parties to the Boeing 737 Max Crash shareholder derivative suit in Delaware Chancery Court have agreed to settle the case for a payment of $237.5 million, all of which is to be funded by D&O insurance. As part of the settlement, the company also agreed to adopt several safety and oversight protocols and other corporate governance measures. The settlement is subject to court approval. A copy of the November 5, 2021 statement of the co-lead plaintiff, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, about the settlement can be found here. A copy of the parties’ settlement stipulation can be found here.
Continue Reading Boeing Air Crash Derivative Lawsuit Settles for $237.5 Million

Last month, when the Delaware Court of Chancery sustained the breach of the duty of oversight claim against the Boeing board, some observers suggested we could see an increase in board oversight breach lawsuits. We may yet see more breach of the duty of oversight claims, but another more recent Delaware Chancery Court decision in the Marriott data breach shareholder derivative suit suggests claimants still face an uphill battle in asserting these kinds of claims. On October 5, 2021, Delaware Vice Chancellor Lori Will granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss in the case, in part on grounds related to the plaintiff’s breach of the duty of oversight claims. As discussed below, the ruling could have particular significance with respect to the prospects for claims of breach of the duty of oversight relating to cybersecurity issues. A copy of Vice Chancellor Will’s opinion can be found here.
Continue Reading Cybersecurity-Related Oversight Duty Breach Claim Against Marriott Board Dismissed

In the following guest post, Gregory A. Markel, Paul Ferrillo, Daphne Morduchowitz and Sarah A. Fedner take a look at and consider the implications of the Delaware Supreme Court’s September 23, 2021 decision in United Food and Commercial Workers Union v. Zuckerberg, et al, in which the Court articulated a new test for determining whether demand is excused as futile in shareholder derivative actions under Delaware law. Greg, Paul, and Daphne are partners and Sarah is an associate at Seyfarth Shaw LLP. I would like to thank the authors for allowing me to publish their 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 the authors’ article.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Director Liability in the Wake of the New Delaware Demand Futility Test

In an important decision that highlights the liability exposures facing corporate boards for claims alleging breaches of the duty of oversight, a Delaware Court of Chancery Vice Chancellor denied in substantial part the defendants’ motion to dismiss in the shareholder derivative suit pending against the board of Boeing relating to the 737 Max air crashes. The court concluded that the plaintiff had sufficiently alleged that the company’s board had breached its oversight obligations by failing to establish safety oversight mechanisms prior to the October 2018 Lion Air crash and ignoring red flags about safety issues after the Lion Air crash and before the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash. Vice-Chancellor Morgan Zurn’s September 7, 2021 opinion can be found here.
Continue Reading Del. Court Substantially Denies Boeing Duty of Oversight Claim Dismissal Motion

As I have noted in prior posts (most recently here),over the last several months plaintiff shareholders have filed numerous SPAC-related securities class action lawsuits. In an interesting variant of SPAC-related litigation, a claimant has filed a post-merger SPAC-related class action lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery against the former directors of a SPAC and against the SPAC’s sponsor, in which the claimant alleges the defendants breached their fiduciary duties to the pre-merger SPAC shareholders. The lawsuit has a number of interesting features, as discussed below. A copy of the plaintiffs’ August 4, 2021 complaint in the action can be found here.
Continue Reading SPAC-Related Class Action Breach of Fiduciary Duty Lawsuit Filed in Delaware Chancery Court

A recurring D&O insurance coverage issue is the availability under a D&O insurance policy of coverage for a Delaware appraisal action. As discussed here, in October 2020, the Delaware Supreme Court held in the Solera action that an appraisal action was not a “Securities Claim” within the meaning of the policy at issue and therefore was not a covered claim under the policy. As discussed below, a Delaware Superior Court judge has more recently held in an insurance coverage dispute that because an appraisal action is not “for” a “Wrongful Act,” there was no coverage under the policy at issue. A copy of the Delaware Superior Court’s July 30, 2021 decision in the case can be found here.
Continue Reading Appraisal Action is Not a Claim “for” a Wrongful Act