Law360, New York (January 20, 2016, 11:55 AM EST) -- Courts have been placing ever-increasing burdens on defense counsel relating to insurance. Worse yet, some of the esoteric insurance issues that defense counsel are now expected to master fall far outside of traditional defense counsel areas of expertise. The latest example of this is that defense lawyers can be personally sanctioned with monetary fines if they don't correctly understand their client's directors and officers' insurance policies. See Sun River Energy Inc. v. Nelson, 800 F.3d 1219 (10th Cir. 2015). This case serves as a wake-up call, both for defense counsel who fail to recommend to their clients that they retain separate coverage counsel at the outset of any engagement, and for policyholders, who risk losing millions of dollars in insurance if they rely solely on defense counsel for insurance-related advice....