Litigation

On the final day of the conference, agents met to hear a panel discussion with three insurance-industry CEOs and the president of the Insurance Information Institute on the state of the industry.

Florida has won a $76 million circuit court judgment against the former owners of Aries Insurance Co. that folded in 2002.

Insurance-industry lawyers are calling a global-warming lawsuit based on nuisance laws "the most significant case for the property and casualty insurance industry before the U.S. Supreme Court this term."

Though the credit crisis has waned, securities suits filed during first-quarter 2011 appear to point to another record year, says Advisen.

The security breach of Epsilon's customer data base stirred up a hornet's nest of attention earlier this month with calls for a federal investigation by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), but an insurance broker says this could be just the beginning of a long road of liability exposure.

A shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has filed a lawsuit alleging that Warren Buffett and the company's board hurt investors by failing to act swiftly when they found out about stock trades that outgoing executive David Sokol made ahead of Berkshire's $9 billion takeover of chemical company Lubrizol.