Please join us in welcoming Katherine Hendler Fayne, who has joined Amy Stewart Law as Of Counsel.

Before joining us, Katherine handled a wide range of litigation at Dallas’ Lillard Wise Szygenda. She also clerked for two U.S. District Judges in the Northern District of Texas, The Honorable Jorge Solis and The Honorable Sam Lindsay, and handled complex commercial litigation at the Dallas office of Fish & Richardson and D.C.’s Arnold & Porter.

In the mid-1990s, standard general liability policies began excluding coverage for employment risks. Since that change, insurance specifically for employment-related liability has been a standard component of corporate insurance portfolios. 

Although some businesses elect not to shift employment risks to an insurer, many purchase employment practices liability (EPL) coverage to protect the company, its executive team, and other employees from lawsuits filed by employees, former employees, and applicants asserting employment claims.

Running a business is full of risks, which is why one of the first purchases savvy business owners make is insurance. Between the dizzying array of choices and the opaque policy language, however, deciding which policies to buy can be overwhelming.

Choosing coverage that will help protect your company when you need it most can pay off in a big way, so here’s a brief overview of the policies commonly available to businesses.

It’s clear that businesses are aware of the risks posed by cyber breaches, given the growth of the cybersecurity industry and the growing number and variety of insurance products available to help companies recover from cyber attacks. 

Still, there’s plenty of room for growth, according to a recent report titled "The Cybersecurity Risk to Knowledge Assets,” a joint effort of the law firm Kilpatrick Townsend, and Ponemon Institute LLC. The bulk of the 35-page report is devoted to the potential loss of “knowledge assets” (i.e. trade secrets and other confidential information) in a cyber breach, but it also includes some interesting notes for those of us who follow the cyber insurance world. 

According to the report, 60 percent of businesses surveyed either have cyber insurance (29 percent) or plan to get it within the next year (31 percent). 

With the growth of wire-transfer fraud schemes, it seems only fitting that banks would take steps to protect their customers from the frighteningly agile and adaptive hackers who prey on them.

According to Reuters, Los Angeles-based Grandpoint Bank appears to be the first bank to offer an insurance policy to its business customers to protect them from losses in wire transfer scams. The policy is underwritten by Hiscox Inc., and costs $30 to $70 per month for up to $1 million in coverage.

As data breaches continue to make nearly daily headlines, more businesses are considering purchasing cyber insurance to help protect them in the event of a breach or other kind of cyber event. 

But buying insurance is never easy, and the fact that cyber insurance is still a new product with little standardization among carriers makes it even more difficult to purchase.

We are pleased to announce that Amy Stewart Law Managing Principal Amy Elizabeth Stewart and Principal Tarron Gartner-Ilai were both named to D Magazine’s 2016 listing of the Best Lawyers in Dallas. The two lawyers were recognized for their work in insurance law.

Insurance policyholders may want to temper their reactions to yesterday’s decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Travelers Indemnity Co. of America v. Portal Healthcare Solutions LLC.

In its unpublished opinion, the Fourth Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling that Portal Healthcare’s data breach was covered under the company’s commercial general liability (CGL) policies. While the decision is significant, it’s worth highlighting an important fact: the policies at issue were issued in 2012 and 2013. More recent CGL policies may contain language purporting to exclude data breaches and other cyber events from traditional CGL coverage. An exclusion that surfaced in 2014, for example, precludes coverage for claims arising out of access to or disclosure of confidential or personal information.

People will be talking about the Panama Papers leak – called the biggest leak in the history of data journalism – for a long time. And there is certainly a lot there to talk about: offshore holdings, shell corporations, tax evasion and the financial accounts of an international roster of world leaders, businessmen, criminals, celebrities and sports stars, just for starters.

The Panama Papers, so named because the information that was hacked came from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, are a solid reminder that law firms are seen as a “soft target” in the hacking world. That’s because their cybersecurity protocols aren’t usually as robust as those in the financial services world, even though they maintain huge amounts of confidential information on behalf of their clients.