Law Firm Sues AIG Unit Over Sports Fraud Coverage

By Ganesh Setty

A Florida-based law firm and its principal attorney have accused an AIG unit of misleading them into defending a sports memorabilia collector and his company in a Securities and Exchange Commission civil action and two related criminal cases, saying the unit had already agreed in writing to their billing rates.

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FDIC Wins Discovery Bid In SVB Fraud Coverage Row

By Ganesh Setty

A Chubb unit must give certain documents to Silicon Valley Bank's former parent SVB Financial Group regarding coverage for a fraud that SVB Financial said caused $73 million in losses, a North Carolina federal court ruled Friday, though relieving an excess insurer of doing the same.

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Fla. Judge Splits Trial In Case Over DJ's Elevator Injuries

By David Minsky

A Florida federal judge Friday bifurcated a trial between two insurance carriers and an elevator company that settled a Miami D.J.'s $5.5 million injury lawsuit, ruling that excess coverage claims will be tried first, with bad faith claims being tried after.

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Grier Wright Tapped For Insurance Mogul's $2B Liquidation

By Gina Kim

Bankruptcy attorney Joseph Grier of Grier Wright Martinez PA will serve as special master to identify, receive, track and distribute billions of dollars that will go toward restitution to victims defrauded by convicted insurance mogul Greg Lindberg, a North Carolina federal judge ruled.

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Insurance Group Of The Year: Covington

By Hope Patti

From cementing Merck's win in a $1.4 billion cyber coverage dispute to securing insurance coverage for Tyco in sprawling multidistrict litigation over forever chemicals, Covington & Burling LLP's work in precedent-setting cases has earned it a spot among the 2024 Law360 Insurance Groups of the Year.

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Brief

3rd Circ. Halts Pa. Med Insurer Suit Pending High Court Review

By George Woolston

The Third Circuit agreed Friday to put a hold on its ruling that Pennsylvania's medical malpractice insurance fund is an agency of the state and can dip into the fund's $300 million budget surplus pending the outcome of the fund's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Brief

Philip Morris Settles Tobacco Liability Trial After Openings

By Julie Manganis

Philip Morris and a supermarket chain have reached a settlement with the family of a Massachusetts woman who died of lung cancer in 2022 after decades of smoking the company's Marlboro cigarettes, ending the case a day after trial began.

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La. Judge Returns $22M Hurricane Ida Claim To State Court

By Elliot Weld

A Louisiana federal judge has sent a $22 million insurance dispute over oil drilling equipment damaged by Hurricane Ida back to state court, citing an invalid arbitration clause between the parties.

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Coding Boot Camp Seeks Coverage For Tuition Financing Row

By Hope Patti

A San Francisco-based company that runs coding boot camps said its insurers must defend and indemnify it for federal and state probes and private settlements related to its tuition financing program, telling a California federal court that coverage denials have left the company on the brink of insolvency.

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Title Insurer Wants Conn. Atty's Suit Over Audit, Ouster Cut

By Brian Steele

A Hartford real estate attorney's sprawling lawsuit against title insurer CATIC over an allegedly mishandled audit and his removal from company boards should be significantly trimmed because there was no fiduciary relationship and some parties were not properly served, the defendants told a state court in seeking dismissal of 18 counts.

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Chemical Co. Says Insurer Owed Defense For Birth Defect Suit

By Hope Patti

A chemical supplier said a Liberty Mutual unit unreasonably denied coverage for an underlying suit brought by workers at a Seattle-area Boeing facility who blame their son's birth defects on chemicals they were exposed to on the job, according to a suit removed to Washington federal court.

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Aircraft Leasing Co. Battles Insurer's Bid To Strike Witnesses

By Carolina Bolado

Aircraft leasing company Avmax is fighting an attempt by HDI Global to strike witnesses Avmax has in its suit over coverage of airplanes stranded in Russia, arguing that the insurer can't claim prejudice when it has four months before trial to speak to the witnesses.

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UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Max Austin

This past week in London has seen Axa Insurance and Admiral face a claim from a former lawyer recently exposed for personal injury fraud, the owner of Reading Football Club sue a prospective buyer and mobile network Lycamobile tackle action by Spanish network Yogio. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.

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LA Wildfires' Effect On Calif. Insurer Of Last Resort

Attorneys at Willkie discuss the background of California's insurer of last resort — known as the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan — and examine the process of assessing member insurers and relevant recent property insurance market developments in light of the destruction from the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires.

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Class Actions At The Circuit Courts: Nov. And Dec. Lessons

In this month's review of class action appeals, Mitchell Engel at Shook Hardy discusses five federal court decisions and identifies practice tips from cases involving takings clause violations, breach of contract with banks, life insurance policies, employment and automobile defects.

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Artfully Conceding Liability Can Offer Defendants 3 Benefits

In the rare case that a company makes the strategic decision to admit liability, it’s important to do so clearly and consistently in order to benefit from the various forms of armor that come from an honest acknowledgment, says Ken Broda-Bahm at Persuasion Strategies.

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Mentorship Resolutions For The New Year

Attorneys tend to focus on personal achievements or career milestones when they set yearly goals, but one important area often gets overlooked in this process — mentoring relationships, which are some of the most effective tools for professional growth, say Kelly Galligan at Rutan & Tucker and Andra Greene at Phillips ADR.

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Analysis

Companies Risk White House Wrath By Keeping DEI Programs

By Sarah Jarvis

For companies pushing forward with their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives amid a torrent of attacks from President Donald Trump and his allies, there are myriad potential risks ahead — and murky questions about the legal parameters of Trump's anti-DEI agenda.

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Law Students Scramble As Federal Gov't Yanks Job Offers

By Alison Knezevich

Law students across the country are scrambling to figure out their next steps after a range of federal agencies yanked job and internship offers this week because of the new hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration.

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Mass Tort Atty Files Ch. 11 Owing $202M To Litigation Funders

By Hilary Russ

A Houston plaintiffs attorney has filed for personal Chapter 11 protection with more than $202 million of litigation funding liabilities, according to his petition in the Southern District of Texas.

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Feud Heats Up Over Estate Of Wife Killed By Ex-BigLaw Atty

By Emily Johnson

The godson of a Georgia woman killed by her husband, former Fisher Phillips partner Claud "Tex" McIver, has said her cousins shouldn't get proceeds from a settlement of an underlying wrongful death suit, calling them "strangers" to her and claiming "the redistributive windfall" they're asking for "has no place in Georgia law."

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Boston Firm Says IT Vendor Holding Computers 'Hostage'

By Julie Manganis

Boston-based law firm Melick & Porter LLP says a company it hired to manage its information technology is now holding its computer network and data "hostage" by refusing to cooperate with the transition to a new vendor unless Melick pays it $380,000.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Phillips Black Inc., Ridley McGreevy & Winocur PC and King & Spalding LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the U.S. Supreme Court revived claims from a woman on death row in Oklahoma that prosecutors unfairly sex-shamed her and relied on gender-based stereotypes to convince a jury that she had killed her estranged husband for insurance money.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

A new Law360 Pulse survey shows that more than 90% of in-house counsel have no regrets about their decisions to join companies. In litigation stemming from Purdue Pharma's sales of OxyContin that fueled the opioid crisis, the Sackler family would lose control of Purdue and pay $6.5 billion in the latest proposed settlement. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.​

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