In this episode of S&C Sidebar, Annie Ostrager, Co-Head of S&C’s Employment Law Group, is joined by Litigation Partner Ollie Engebretson-Schooley to discuss the challenges of advising clients on evolving law and current litigation trends clients should monitor, including an uptick in derivative Section 10(b) claims and an increase in damages amounts for settlements in derivative cases.
A preview of the conversation is below.
Annie: What areas are you watching right now for your clients that you think should be on their radar screens?
Ollie: We’re seeing a lot more derivative litigation for Section 10(b) claims and a significant increase in damages amounts for settlements in derivative cases. Those cases used to be much smaller value cases and they were more focused on corporate governance reforms. Now you're seeing settlements with seven, eight, nine figure damages amounts. There's a number of different reasons for that, but I think what companies need to be aware of is that a lot of the risk can be addressed early on. Being proactive about not only ensuring that companies have the right corporate governance in place, but also making sure that corporate governance is well documented, is really critical to protecting them against these types of cases.