Sarah Abrams
In the following guest post, Sarah Abrams, Head of Professional Liability Claims at Bowhead Specialty, takes a look at the challenges that financial trading based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) could mean for D&O, Professional, and Cyber insurers. I would like to thank Sarah for allowing me to publish her 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.…
According to the latest annual report from ISS Securities Class Action Services, there were two securities class action settlements in 2022 that were large enough to make the firm’s list of the Top 100 U.S. Securities Class Action settlements. These two settlements took place in a year in which there were a total of 141 approved monetary securities class action settlements totaling $4.77 billion. The details of the settlements included the two largest during 2022…
Largely due to the decline in the numbers of merger objection class action lawsuit filings and a decline in the number of Rule 10b-5 filings, the number of new federal court securities class action lawsuit filings declined in 2022 for the fourth consecutive year, according to the latest annual report from NERA Economic Consulting. The report, entitled “Recent Trends in Securities Class Action Litigation: 2022 Full-Year Review” also shows that aggregate, average, and median securities…
The directors’ and officers’ liability environment is always changing, but 2022 was a particularly eventful year, with important consequences for the D&O insurance marketplace. The past year’s many developments also have significant implications for what may lie ahead in 2023 – and possibly for years to come. I have set out below the Top Ten D&O Stories of 2022, with a focus on future implications. Please note that on Thursday, January 12, 2023 at 11:00…
Federal court securities class action lawsuits filings slightly declined in 2022 compared to 2021, representing the third straight years of filing declines. The number of 2022 filings also fell below long-term annual filing averages; however, the number of core federal court securities class action filings in 2022 was only slightly below the number of 2021 core filings and the long-term historical annual average number of core filings.
Number of Federal Court Securities Class Action Filings…
Businesses these days face a wide variety of headwinds – rising interest rates, economic inflation, supply chain and labor supply disruptions, war in Ukraine, even continued disruptions from COVID – that are interfering with business operations and affecting financial performance. In some instances, these macroeconomic factors are translating into securities litigation. In the latest example of this phenomenon, a plaintiff shareholder has sued video display systems company Daktronics following the company’s announcement that supply chain…
Since the initial coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. in March 2020, plaintiffs’ lawyers have filed a host of securities class action lawsuits against companies raising a variety of COVID-19-related allegations. Many of these cases have faced significant hurdles at the initial pleading stage, and in a number of cases the dismissal motions have been granted. The one categorical exception to these dismissal motion generalizations seems to be cases involving vaccine development companies. Two rulings in…
At this point late in the year, it is looking increasingly likely that 2022 will be a down year in terms of the number of securities class action lawsuit filings relative both to recent years and even relative to long term historical norms. However, an important (and arguably somewhat surprising) part of the securities suits that were filed this year is the significant number of COVID-related securities suits filed this year. I say “surprising” because…
During most of my career working on D&O liability issues, if we were talking about D&O claims, we were talking about developments in the U.S. In recent years, this generalization is increasingly untrue; starting with the global financial crisis now more than a decade ago, investors, regulators, and others throughout the world have sought to hold companies and their directors and officers accountable. The topic of D&O claims is no longer (and has not been…
Regular readers know that in recent months I have been following two securities class action litigation filing trends: first, the incidence of COVID-19-related securities suit filings, and, second, the influx of claims relating to macroeconomic factors, including, among other things, global supply chain disruption (which was itself caused at least in part by the coronavirus). In a lawsuit that includes allegations that involve both of these trends, a plaintiff shareholder has filed a securities class…