$51M
median nuclear verdict in 2024 — exceeding the primary limits of most commercial property operators
116%
year-over-year increase in total nuclear verdict awards — 2023 to 2024
9%
annual rate at which liability insurance costs are rising — Chubb, 2025 Shareholder Letter
57%
increase in U.S. liability claims driven by social inflation over the past decade — Swiss Re 2024
The Opening Argument
The Verdict Risk Alliance exists because the liability environment facing commercial property operators has changed structurally — and the insurance market has not kept pace.
Nuclear verdicts are not a cyclical phenomenon that will normalize when market conditions change. Third-party litigation funding is not a temporary trend that will reverse when interest rates shift. The organizational plaintiff strategies — reptile theory, anchoring, aggressive TPLF-backed case management — are not tactical experiments that plaintiff attorneys will abandon. These are structural features of the current liability environment, and they are permanent.
The Verdict Risk Alliance was organized in response to this structural reality. This briefing explains what the Alliance is, how it is structured, and why it was built the way it was built.
The Problem the Alliance Was Built to Address
What the existing market gets wrong about commercial property excess liability
$51M
Median nuclear verdict in 2024 — exceeding the primary limits of most commercial property operators
Marathon Strategies 2025
116%
Year-over-year increase in total nuclear verdict awards — 2023 to 2024
Marathon Strategies 2025
35%
Estimated E&S market share in commercial property excess — as standard market capacity contracts
Swiss Re Institute 2025
Why a New Structure Was Needed
What existing excess programs do not provide — and why it matters
Standard excess programs provide a limit and a policy. They do not address the upstream factors — organizational preparedness, incident response, defense resources, and litigation intelligence — that determine whether a claim becomes a nuclear verdict case. The Alliance was built to address the full liability lifecycle, not just the coverage component at the end of it.
Coverage without context. Standard excess programs price based on historical frequency and severity data. They do not differentiate between organizations with strong operational preparedness and those without — because they have no visibility into operational practices. The Alliance's risk clarity process creates that visibility and reflects it in underwriting.
No upstream engagement. Standard excess programs engage at the point of claim. The Alliance engages before incidents occur — through operating standards, incident control protocols, and litigation positioning resources. The goal is to prevent nuclear verdict cases from developing, not just to fund them when they do.
No intelligence infrastructure. Standard excess programs do not provide members with intelligence about the liability environment — verdict trends, jurisdiction risk, TPLF activity, plaintiff attorney intelligence. The Alliance does, because informed members make better operational and insurance decisions.
No collective leverage. Individual property operators negotiate excess coverage on their own, without the collective purchasing power that a structured group provides. The Alliance's purchasing group structure creates leverage that individual operators cannot access — in pricing, in capacity, and in program stability across market cycles.
The Alliance Structure
How the Verdict Risk Alliance is organized and why
The Verdict Risk Alliance is organized as a risk purchasing group under the federal Liability Risk Retention Act of 1986. This structure was chosen deliberately for three reasons: it provides federal regulatory stability, it enables collective bargaining for coverage terms and capacity, and it creates a defined membership pool that allows underwriting to reflect the actual risk profile of prepared organizations rather than the market average.
The Five-Pillar Platform
Risk Clarity, Operating Standards, Incident Control, Litigation Positioning, and Financial Protection. Each pillar addresses a distinct phase of the liability lifecycle. Together, they represent an integrated approach to nuclear verdict risk that no standard excess program offers.
The Program Administrator
The Alliance is administered by Rainshade Specialty LLC — a program administrator built specifically to support this model. Rainshade's founding team brings direct experience building and managing purchasing group programs for commercial property segments at scale.
The Coverage Structure
Broad-form monoline excess and umbrella liability. Two structures: $200M xs $1M or $190M xs $11M. Placed through licensed, admitted carriers. The coverage is designed to work with the platform — not as a standalone product, but as the financial protection component of an integrated risk management system.
What Membership Means
Why the Alliance is structured as a membership organization — not just an insurance program
Membership in the Verdict Risk Alliance is not simply purchasing an insurance policy. It is joining an organization that is actively working to improve the liability outcomes of its members — through intelligence, through operational resources, through defense support, and through the collective credibility of a membership pool that is visibly committed to nuclear verdict risk management.
The membership structure matters because it creates shared incentives. Alliance members have a stake in each other's preparedness, because the overall risk profile of the membership pool affects the coverage terms available to all members. This is the fundamental advantage of the purchasing group structure over individual excess placement — it aligns the interests of coverage, operations, and defense in a way that individual policies cannot.
The Verdict Risk Alliance is not a solution to the nuclear verdict environment. Nothing is. It is a structured response — designed to give commercial real estate, habitational, and hospitality operators the intelligence, the operational framework, the defense resources, and the financial protection they need to navigate an environment that is not going to become easier.
For more information on Alliance membership and how to join, visit
"Social inflation has had the most pronounced impact on large corporate risks in the umbrella and excess liability space — this trend is not only driving up the cost of claims, but also contributing to rate increases across the board."
Meg Sutton, SVP U.S. Casualty, Global Risk Solutions, Liberty Mutual Insurance
"The exploding frequency and cost of litigation for businesses of all kinds is raising liability insurance costs about 7% to 9% a year — multiples of the inflation rate. As the largest commercial insurer in the U.S., we see firsthand on a daily basis how our nation's litigation problem is worsening and out of control."
Evan Greenberg, Chairman & CEO, Chubb Limited — 2025 Annual Letter to Shareholders
The Escalating Environment
Nuclear Verdict Total Awards — Annual Growth
Source: Marathon Strategies 2025. Nuclear verdict defined as award exceeding $10M against corporate defendant.
verdictriskalliance.org.
