Dan Wolf

As I discussed in a recent post, in July 2019, a Delaware Superior Court judge held that an appraisal action is a Securities Claim within the meaning of the applicable D&O insurance policy. While this part of the court’s ruling was noteworthy, there was another part of the court’s ruling that was also important. In addition to the Securities Claim issue, the court also determined that policy provided coverage for pre-judgment interest on the fair value payment in the appraisal action, even though the policy did not provide coverage for the payment itself.

In the following guest post, Dan Wolf, an associate at the Gilbert law firm, takes a look at the pre-judgment interest aspect of the recent Delaware opinion. Among other things, Dan suggests that this aspect of the court’s decision changes defendants’ analysis of whether or not to prepay appraisal claimants. A version of this article first appeared on his firm’s blog, here. I would like to thank Dan for his willingness to allow 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 Dan’s article.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Delaware Court Ruling Creates New Wrinkle for Defendants Evaluating Appraisal Claims

As the number of shareholder appraisal lawsuits increased a few years ago, a recurring question has been whether or not a company’s D&O insurance covers the company’s costs incurred in defending an appraisal action. In a recent decision, a Delaware Superior Court judge rejected a number of the recurring coverage defenses on which insurers rely in disputing coverage for appraisal action costs and expenses. The Court’s opinion in the Solera Holdings case contains several very interesting rulings, some of which could be relevant even outside of the appraisal action context. A copy of the Delaware Superior Court’s July 31, 2019 opinion can be found here.
Continue Reading D&O Insurance: Del. Court Rejects Insurers’ Appraisal Action Coverage Defenses