Kevin LaCroix

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There is no private right of action under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. However, regulatory enforcement actions under the FCPA by U.S. government authorities can and often does result in massive fines and penalties. When companies subject to FCPA enforcement are compelled to pay these penalties they often then hit with follow-on civil lawsuits arising out of or based on the anti-corruption enforcement action. In the most recent example of this anti-corruption enforcement and follow-on…
A short time ago, a storm of controversy briefly emerged after a Delaware court endorsed a firm’s adoption of a fee-shifting bylaw. The controversy quieted down after the Delaware legislature adopted a statutory provision prohibiting fee-shifting bylaws. The fee-shifting provision controversy could be back, albeit this time in a different state. A Nevada legislator has introduced a bill in the state senate that would explicitly allow Nevada corporations to adopt  provisions requiring fee-shifting…
In the latest twist in a long-running legal saga, on March 15, 2019, the FDIC announced that it had reached a $335 million settlement of the negligence action the agency had brought against PwC in connection with the accounting firm’s audit work for the defunct Colonial Bank. The curious thing about this settlement is that it represents only a little more half of the amount that a federal district court judge awarded the FDIC as…
Even as the Brexit process unwinds in an ever more confounding pile of confusion, companies must continue to plan, operate, and report to their shareholders. U.S. securities regulators have already issued calls for reporting companies to provide greater details about the plans of management in the face of the risks and uncertainties surrounding the Brexit process. On March 15, 2019, William Hinman, the Director of the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance, speaking at a securities…
In a number of recent posts (most recently here), I have emphasized the importance of the wording of the securities exclusion in private company D&O insurance policies. A recent case out of Florida underscores the importance of the securities exclusion wording and illustrates how an unusual wording can lead to the preclusion of coverage for claims that might otherwise be covered. The decision also highlights the extent of the preclusionary effect from exclusions written…
For everyone involved in the public company D&O arena, IPOs are a continuing source of interest and concern. An important part of thinking about IPO companies and their D&O risk profile in understanding what is going on in the IPO marketplace. On March 6, 2019, the Proskauer Rose law issued its annual analysis of the 2018 U.S. IPO activity. The report provides an interesting overview of the important characteristics of 2018 IPOs. The IPO report…
In a ruling that turned on the interpretation of a technical financial term, a federal district court concluded that the Options Trading exclusion in an investment firm’s E&O policy precluded coverage for investor claims arising out of a financial transaction gone bad. In concluding that the exclusion precluded coverage, the court applied a standard financial industry definition to interpret the meaning of a specific policy term. The court’s opinion makes for interesting reading and provides…
The threats to data security are substantial. Every organization faces some level of cyber risk. So how do we get better at cybersecurity? That is the question that Paul Ferrillo and Christophe Veltsos ask in the following guest post. Paul is a shareholder in the Greenberg Traurig law firm’s Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Crisis Management Practice. Chris is is a professor in the Department of Computer Information Science at Minnesota State University, Mankato where he regularly…
On Tuesday, March 5, 2019, it was my distinct honor and pleasure to be one of the invited speakers at Professor Joseph Grundfest’s corporate and securities litigation class at Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, California. Along with Priya Cherian Huskins of the Woodruff Sawyer firm, I was invited to address the students on the topic of the role of D&O insurance in securities and derivative litigation.…
Regular readers know that I frequently write about insurance coverage disputes in which insurers contend that coverage is precluded due to the policyholders’ alleged late provision of notice. All too often, the policyholders end up without coverage as a result of the late notice allegations. In an interesting (albeit confusingly written) decision, a Michigan intermediate appellate court upheld a trial court’s rejection of a professional liability insurer’s late notice argument, finding that in fact the…