Latest USA Headlines
All the headlines from our USA Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Lawsuits Targeting E-Cigarettes Increase Along with Death, Illness Reports
Sep 17 2019 // Several deaths and potentially hundreds of illnesses have been tied to e-cigarettes, which allow users to inhale nicotine vapor, often flavored, without smoking. Lawsuits have been filed against e-cigarette maker Juul and...
Facing Thousands of Opioid Lawsuits, Purdue Pharma Files for Bankruptcy Protection
Sep 16 2019 // OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP filed for bankruptcy protection Sunday night, succumbing to pressure from more than 2,600 lawsuits alleging the company helped fuel the deadly U.S. opioid epidemic. Purdue’s board met...
Insured Losses for Typhoon Faxai Estimated at US$3B-US$7B: AIR Worldwide
Sep 16 2019 // Industry insured losses from Typhoon Faxai, which made landfall in Japan on Sept. 9, will be between 340 billion Japanese yen (US$3 billion) and 740 billion yen (USD 7 billion), estimated Boston-based catastrophe risk...
Dive Boat Owners Seek to Head off Lawsuits After 34 Die in Fire off California Coast
Sep 16 2019 // The owners of the dive boat where 34 people perished in a fire off Southern California filed a lawsuit in early September to head off potentially costly litigation, a move condemned by some observers as disrespectful to...
People & Places
Sep 16 2019 // National Ralph Blust Insurance broker Aon has appointed Jay Demeusy as U.S. vice chairman of its Reinsurance Solutions business. Alongside his new role, Demeusy will continue to chair the newly formed Global Construction...
Business Moves
Sep 16 2019 // National Arch Insurance, Ventus Risk Management Arch Insurance North America has agreed to acquire Ventus Risk Management, a technology and analytics- driven managing general underwriter that specializes in providing...
Today’s E&S Market Is an ‘Overwhelming’ Success
Sep 16 2019 // Business Is Gushing, Underwriters Trying to Keep Up Demand for surplus lines insurance rose dramatically in 2018 and is continuing to expand this year, so much so that some in the sector are feeling a bit overwhelmed. The...
Arch Nemesis of Uber over Driver Pay Sues Before New California Law Inked
Sep 13 2019 // It didn’t take long for attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan to deploy a new weapon in her six-year war with Uber Technologies Inc. over driver pay. Within hours of Uber thumbing its nose at a pending California labor law...
Another Hard Market Harbinger: U.S. Commercial Lines Prices Up 4% in Q2
Sep 12 2019 // In yet another sign of a hardening market, U.S. commercial insurance prices grew at an accelerated rate compared to a year ago, according to Willis Towers Watson’s latest Commercial Lines Insurance Pricing...
Report: $221B in Western U.S. Homes at Extreme Risk of Wildfire Damage
Sep 12 2019 // Nearly 776,000 homes with a reconstruction cost value of more than $221 billion are at extreme risk of wildfire damage, a new report out Thursday shows. The 2019 CoreLogic Wildfire Risk Report examines single-family and...
Reuters: How Court Lets Merck Hide Baldness Drug Propecia’s Risks
Sep 12 2019 // By the time Kelly Pfaff got home from driving her son to school that morning, it was too late. Her husband, John, was supposed to be taking their 4-year-old daughter to school. But the girl and the nanny were still at the...
Dallas Electric Utility to Pay $50K to Settle Federal Disability Discrimination Suit
Sep 11 2019 // A Dallas-based electric utility company will pay $50,000 and furnish other relief to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit, federal officials said. A consent decree in the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity...
Judge: Facebook ‘Could Not Be More Wrong’ in Cambridge Analytica Defense
Sep 11 2019 // Facebook Inc. users suing over the social network’s worst-ever privacy scandal gained leverage to pry into its internal records to back up their claims that it failed to safeguard their personal data, exposing the...
Outrage over PG&E’s Plan to Cap California Wildfire Liabilities at $18B
Sep 10 2019 // California utility giant PG&E Corp. has issued its long-awaited plan for emerging from the largest utility bankruptcy in U.S. history: Raise debt, offer equity and cap the wildfire liabilities that led to its collapse...
Judge Permits Nationwide Privacy Lawsuit Against Facebook to Proceed
Sep 10 2019 // A federal judge on Monday ordered Facebook Inc. to face most of a nationwide lawsuit seeking damages for letting third parties such as Cambridge Analytica access users’ private data, calling the social media...
Generic Drugmaker Mallinckrodt Settles Opioid Lawsuits with 2 Ohio Counties
Sep 9 2019 // One of the largest makers of generic opioids has settled a lawsuit with two Ohio counties, removing the company from the first federal trial over the toll of the opioid crisis. United Kingdom-based Mallinckrodt announced...
Guy Carpenter’s Holtmeier Joins BMS as U.S. Reinsurance Chief Strategy Officer
Sep 9 2019 // Reinsurance brokerage BMS Group announced the appointment of Gregg Holtmeier as chief strategy officer of its U.S. reinsurance operations. With 20 years’ experience in the reinsurance markets, Holtmeier joins BMS...
U.S. Opposes Merger of Title Insurers Fidelity National and Stewart
Sep 9 2019 // The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Friday that it had filed an administrative complaint aimed at preventing title insurance provider Fidelity National Financial, Inc. from buying rival Stewart Information Services...
Aon Launches Real-Time Loss Forecasting for U.S. Hurricanes, European Windstorms
Sep 9 2019 // Aon plc has launched Automated Event Response (AER), designed to enable insurers to view real-time portfolio risks from two of the costliest perils: U.S. hurricane and European windstorm. Insurers, which aim to indemnify...
Space-Faring Nations Need Regulations to Prevent Satellite Collisions: Opinion
Sep 9 2019 // Last week, the European Space Agency reached out to to warn Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. that one of its satellites might collide with a SpaceX communications satellite. When ESA first raised such...
