HNRK Coverage Corner

On September 24, 2025, Judge Jennifer L. Hall from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware issued a decision in Amtrust Fin. Servs., Inc. v. Liberty Ins. Underwriters Inc., C.A. No. 21-347-JLH, holding that securities and derivative litigation against AmTrust were not covered by an excess D&O policy because the lawsuits arose out of alleged accounting improprieties that were the subject of a “Notice of Circumstances” the company reported to its insurers during an earlier policy period.

As we have previously discussed on this blog, D&O policies are ...

In this edition of Hoguet Newman’s Coverage Corner Blog, we look at a recent case from New York’s Appellate Division that considered a situation where an insured settled litigation with plaintiffs by assigning them its right to sue its insurers—and, specifically, whether the insured was “released” by the settlement such that any indemnification obligation was extinguished.   The case, Geiger v Hudson Excess Insurance Co., also considered whether an establishment serving food and drinks misrepresented the true nature of its business when it applied for insurance. 

By ...

On August 12, 2025, a divided Delaware Supreme Court held, in a 3–2 split, that the payment of defense costs by the Named Insured’s corporate parent do not satisfy a CGL policy’s self-insured retention (“SIR”) unless the parent is specifically listed as a Named Insured or the policy language otherwise allows it.  In In re Aearo Technologies LLC Insurance Appeals, C.A. No. N23C-06-255 (Del. Aug. 12, 2025), the court found that the SIR was a condition to precedent to coverage and adopted a strict reading of the policy language that the insured argued elevated form over substance.