Introduction
Imagine you are general counsel explaining to your management that the insurance benefits you thought the other party to a corporate transaction had assigned to your company to cover assumed liabilities are not actually available. Now you have major lawsuits pending against your company with no corresponding insurance benefits to provide defense or indemnity because your own company's insurance will not respond to those claims. Worse still, the lawsuits also name the other party to the transaction, and a dispute is rapidly brewing between the companies concerning not only who is responsible to defend the claims asserted against both entities, but also who gets the insurance benefits. This would not be a pleasant conversation.