E&S/Specialty

February 2010 has a lot to offer both sports fans and special-event insurers, featuring the NFL's Super Bowl XLIV and the Winter Olympics, which started this past weekend in Vancouver, Canada.

An Illinois law that set caps on medical malpractice awards for "pain and suffering" has been ruled unconstitutional by the state's high court, which found legislators had overreached in attempting to restrict the judicial process.

Attendees to the mid-year conference of the National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices, Ltd. will see a change in the meeting's format, and will notice that their fellow attendees are higher up on the leadership ladder.

Bermuda-based insurer OneBeacon Insurance Group said it will sell its personal lines business to Tower Group Inc. for about $180.5 million.

Carriers and brokers selling Side-A directors and officers liability insurance coverage by delivering warnings about the increasing severity of shareholder derivative lawsuits may be overstating the trend.

Insurance trade groups are asking the House to reject proposed legislation that would end the antitrust exemption afforded health and medical malpractice insurers by the McCarran-Ferguson Act.

C.V. Starr & Company (California) announced that Michael Garrison, a senior vice president with another branch of the parent firm, has been appointed its president and chief executive officer.

Bermuda-based global specialty insurer Torus said it has named Carl Groth as group chief risk officer, a new position within the year-old company.