Reviewed Feb 2017
Some people get named in prominent court cases, but most of us would probably want to avoid it like the plague! Mr Steigrad was a former Bridgecorp director who – along with others – featured in the High Court then Appeal Court and finally (in December 2013) a Supreme Court decision about how a Directors and Officers Liability Insurance cover should respond to claims from aggrieved investors. The outcome (to cut a long story short) was that if you have a (say $500,000) policy that should respond to compensate someone claiming against you, all of that sum is required to be available for settlement and you cannot say “I’ve already spent $300,000 on legal fees and the more we battle the more the lawyers get and the less you get!”.
Again, NZACS is ahead of the game: the cover you have under the insurance sourced by NZACS now “ring-fences” defence costs, so you can ignore dire warnings about no longer having cover, and move on to something more interesting.