Biotech Company Loses Insurance Appeal on SEC Probe Expenses

An American Financial Group Inc. insurance unit doesn’t owe coverage to a biotechnology company for defense costs incurred as a result of investigative and enforcement actions by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal appeals court ruled.

“JanOne has produced no evidence that the SEC’s investigation and JanOne’s ensuing litigation expenses grew out of, flowed from, or bore any causal relationship to the SEC’s notice of its intent to depose” a JanOne director, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in an unpublished opinion Friday, affirming a lower court order.

The ruling comes as other courts ...