As leaders of organizations, directors and officers can be held personally liable for acts or omissions resulting from their management of the organization. Our lawyers have experience in defending both directors and officers in the following representative cases:
- We have defended a president of a publicly-traded entertainment company named in a class action lawsuit. Plaintiff alleged that the president made numerous business decisions for his own benefit rather than for that of the corporation. The complaint involved allegations of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, negligence and violation of federal securities laws. Some of the allegations pertained to the president's decision to cast his middle-aged girlfriend in the role of Natasha (the Russian femme fatale) in the movie version of Rocky & Bullwinkle.
- We have also represented an insurance company which sued the Directors and Officers of a corporation for declaratory judgment in an insurance coverage matter. The allegation was that the insurance company had no obligation to provide a defense to four class actions which were being tried together in federal court. The insurance company was also seeking reimbursement for legal fees which it incurred in defending the directors and officers and the corporation. The case was resolved with our client, the insurance company, receiving $250,000 reimbursement.
- In addition, our lawyers have defended cases involving directors and officers who have been sued for breach of fiduciary duties, ERISA violations and shareholder actions for alleged mismanagement. In one case, we represented the manager of a credit union pension fund when the manager was sued for beach of fiduciary duties and multiple ERISA violations in addition to other causes of action. This was a multi-party case where the fund manager was the target defendant throughout the litigation. The allegation was that the manager mismanaged the fund, invested in risky, non-blue chip investments which allegedly put the fund at risk and allegedly caused a loss to the fund in the neighborhood $80,000,000 - $120,000,000. We successfully resolved the case in favor of the investment manager.