Law.com Subscribers SAVE 30%
Call 855-808-4530 or email [email protected] to receive your discount on a new subscription.
<b><i> Penn National</i></b> and the Continuing Fight over the 'Continuous Trigger' Rule
For a generation, courts have confronted difficult issues involving insurance coverage for asbestos, environmental, and other long-tail claims. A threshold problem concerns which policies are “triggered” for coverage purposes where exposure may precede manifestation of injury or other damage by many years or even decades. An approach to the trigger issue first widely adopted in asbestos coverage litigation was the so-called “continuous trigger,” or in some jurisdictions “multiple trigger,” which deems all policies in place from initial exposure through final manifestation (in some cases, death) to have been triggered, on the theory that injury from asbestos exposure is continuous through that entire period. In jurisdictions in which a continuous or multiple trigger has been used in asbestos cases, the same approach has frequently been adopted in environmental cases based on similar reasoning. Indeed, because “continuous trigger” is coverage-maximizing, policyholders have made attempts to apply the same approach in other areas, with varying degrees of success.
A very recent decision from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Pennsylvania National Mutual Insurance Company v. St. John (“Penn National“), rejected such efforts in an environmental contamination case, finding environmental cases insufficiently similar to asbestos and limiting coverage to only one of four available policies. The court's analysis and the result suggest a narrow view of the policy concerns presented by asbestos cases, and an inhospitable climate for future cases involving environmental contamination, and potentially other long-tail liabilities, in Pennsylvania.
The DOJ's Corporate Enforcement Policy: One Year Later
The DOJ's Criminal Division issued three declinations since the issuance of the revised CEP a year ago. Review of these cases gives insight into DOJ's implementation of the new policy in practice.
The DOJ's New Parameters for Evaluating Corporate Compliance Programs
The parameters set forth in the DOJ's memorandum have implications not only for the government's evaluation of compliance programs in the context of criminal charging decisions, but also for how defense counsel structure their conference-room advocacy seeking declinations or lesser sanctions in both criminal and civil investigations.
Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements In White Collar Investigations
This article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.
Bankruptcy Sales: Finding a Diamond In the Rough
There is no efficient market for the sale of bankruptcy assets. Inefficient markets yield a transactional drag, potentially dampening the ability of debtors and trustees to maximize value for creditors. This article identifies ways in which investors may more easily discover bankruptcy asset sales.
A Lawyer's System for Active Reading
Active reading comprises many daily tasks lawyers engage in, including highlighting, annotating, note taking, comparing and searching texts. It demands more than flipping or turning pages.