Here’s how a major insurance company (Travelers) describes D&O insurance: “Directors & Officers (D&O) Liability insurance helps cover defense costs and damages (awards and settlements) arising out of wrongful act allegations and lawsuits brought against an organization’s board of directors and/or officers. These types of claims have become increasingly common and directors and officers

I’m not sure which is more grimly entertaining:  watching old advertisements for cigarettes (see here), or watching old advertisements for asbestos products (see here).  If you’re an executive in the front office of a company that acquired an asbestos manufacturer, however, you might fail to appreciate the dark humor.  A few years back,

I have in my office a copy of a Travelers claims manual from the 1980s. In discussing the duty to defend, the manual says, in part: “Ambiguity…means that the words are capable of being understood in two or more reasonably logical ways. Ambiguity should be resolved in favor of the insured. Prompt decisions must be

The other day, I was talking with a lawyer who represented a plaintiff in litigation relating to a failed business transaction. He was lamenting the fact that, if he were to take judgment against the defendants, there wouldn’t be insurance to help satisfy the claim, since, according to him, “no insurance company is ever going

Back in the days of the environmental insurance coverage wars, we on the policyholder side argued (eventually successfully in New Jersey) that the word “sudden”, as used in the 1973 version of the pollution exclusion, meant “unexpected” and did not have a temporal connotation. My friends in the defense bar often criticized us for trying