In a fast-paced economy, it can be difficult for corporate directors and officers to balance their duties and responsibilities with business strategies. Mergers and acquisitions, burgeoning legislation, accounting issues and an explosion of securities litigation involving high-tech companies and the healthcare industry are redefining executive liability.

We combine our legal experience with our business sense to help you understand, prevent and manage risk in a highly competitive environment.

Protecting Your Interests

We understand business and are knowledgeable about the most recent developments affecting your exposure from "D & O" liability. We act quickly and decisively to protect you and your business. In recent years we have:

• Negotiated the settlement of a suit against directors and officers of a Silicon Valley company after a disappointing earnings report caused the company to lose $5 billion in market capitalization. We obtained a settlement with the shareholder class for a small fraction of the $25 million in available insurance coverage.
• Presented a winning trigger of coverage and interrelated wrongful acts argument in a graphic format, which lowered demands and expectations to where our D&O insurer clients' participation in a $60 million settlement of securities fraud claims did not exceed the low six figures.
• Convinced a Wall Street financial institution that, as the marketer of the mutual funds at issue, it should pay for the bulk of a class action settlement, saving the insurer of the investment advisor several million dollars.
• Guided insurers who successfully rescinded a D&O policy in California for misrepresentation in the application, allowing our clients to avoid coverage for claims which greatly exceeded the $1 million policy limit.
• Convinced plaintiffs' counsel in a securities fraud class action to accept a $17.5 million settlement, notwithstanding three prior offers from the defendants valued between $30 million and $50 million.
• Created a customizable employee handbook and CD ROM video training "seminars" for employment practices liability insurers to offer to their insureds with every policy a perfect combination of risk mitigation and sales incentive.
• Helped one of the world's largest insurance brokers create groundbreaking new coverages for patents and other intellectual property owned by high-tech companies making their initial public offerings. This approach to tailored insurance as a financing vehicle is expected to become a necessity for newly emerging companies in e-commerce, biotechnology and computer software.
• Manuscripted a comprehensive errors and omissions insurance policy for a $5 billion financial institution that also covers exposure it incurs from its strategic partners.
• Advised one of the nation's largest financial institutions on managing risks arising from employment practices liability, D&O liability under securities laws, consumer class actions and broker/dealer liability.
• Represented reinsurers in England, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and China in a dispute over large reinsurance claims arising out of environmental impairment liability insurance in the U.S. that produced losses estimated at close to $1 billion. Reinsurance coverage litigation in Illinois and federal courts and in England was ultimately settled by commutation of the reinsurance contracts for a fraction of the estimated losses.

We represent corporate and nonprofit directors and officers and insurance underwriters and their businesses.

Recognized Authorities

Our attorneys write about executive liability and insurance issues for business publications and law journals. They speak at continuing education seminars and before professional groups throughout the United States. Some are members and leaders in the Professional Liability Underwriting Society.

Comprehensive Directors and Officers Services

From corporate counseling to insurance product development to litigation, we can handle all of your executive risk management needs.

Corporate Risk Management We can offer a comprehensive professional risk analysis, craft appropriate indemnification arrangements, negotiate the purchase of insurance, resolve insurance claims and explore funding mechanisms such as trusts and loss mitigation policies. We also advise key personnel on the obligations and risks of directors and officers, including disclosure, relationships to bankers and analysts, and fiduciary roles.

Insurance Industry Services We have helped insurers stay on the leading edge of the business and professional liability arena for decades. We are well-versed in the emerging insurance areas such as coverage for patents and other intellectual property, internet insurance sales, mergers and acquisition risk transfers, employment practices liability, financial institution errors and omissions and D&O insurance for non-profit organizations, public officials and non-public business entities. We assist in the creation of new products, such as a unique form of SEC registrant's insurance to cover the potential liability of demutualizing savings institutions and mutual insurance companies.

We represent insurers who write errors and omissions and other liability policies for mutual funds, bulge-bracket brokers and investment advisors, accounting firms, architects and engineers and other types of professional liability. We act as counsel for domestic insurers and their foreign reinsurers in connection with a program of D&O and EPL insurance that involves coordination of claims defense and analysis of coverage in more than 1,000 cases nationwide.

Litigation We litigate directors and officers coverage issues. We aggressively represent our clients in courtrooms and in alternative dispute resolution proceedings across the country. We also serve as valuable resources to business litigators defending corporate officers and directors in derivative and class litigation, including litigation arising out of federal and state securities laws.