A San Antonio jury spent more than 10 hours over two days weighing whether a rival insurance firm orchestrated a mass employee exodus that gutted a Bermuda-based insurer's surety business, and in the end, they simply couldn't agree. State District Judge Angelica Jimenez granted Argo Group's unopposed motion for a mistrial after the 3½-week trial ended without a verdict.
The case pitted Argo Group against Dual North America and two of its own former executives, Mark Farina and Brendan Keating, over the departure of 27 employees from Argo's surety business in the spring of 2023. According to the San Antonio Express-News, Argo had sought $907 million in damages, including punitive damages, accusing the defendants of taking and using confidential employee, broker, customer and business-operation information.
Jurors were split 6-6 on liability, according to a poll taken by Dual representatives after the deadlock, and 11 of the 12 jurors favored awarding Argo no damages at all, per the station's report attributing those figures to Dual's account. Those numbers suggest the panel leaned heavily toward the defense, even though no formal verdict was ever reached.
A Mass Exodus and a Pending Acquisition
Argo accused Dual North America, Farina and Keating of orchestrating the April 2023 departure of 27 Argo surety-business employees, who the company said accounted for nearly the entire Argo Surety underwriting team. Argo alleged that Farina and Keating had worked with Dual as far back as 2022 on plans for a new surety operation while still employed by Argo, using departing employees to help build a competing business, per the complaint described in the outlet's earlier reporting on the lawsuit.
The timing mattered. Brookfield Reinsurance had agreed to acquire Argo for $1.1 billion, or $30 per share, just two months before the mass departures, and completed that acquisition in November 2023, after which Argo's shares left the New York Stock Exchange. Dual's attorney, Ricardo Cedillo, argued that Argo's purchase price was never adjusted after the employees left, a point he raised in Dual's defense.
Before the exodus, Argo's surety business generated about $200 million in annual gross written premiums. Argo said the departures damaged its reinsurance negotiations and forced it to transfer roughly 80 percent of its surety bond portfolio to Applied Surety Underwriters, with the rest placed in runoff. Argo went on to sell a majority of its in-force surety business to Applied Surety Underwriters in 2024, a transition the two companies had structured around a 100 percent quota-share fronting arrangement, according to Applied Surety Underwriters.
Dueling Accounts of Loyalty and Secrecy
Argo's attorney, Trey Cox, told jurors the company wanted to hold the defendants accountable because, in his words, “they were on our payroll, they shared our business plans, they identified all of our people, they worked for 11 months with Dual to get this entire group out of Argo and into Dual.” Cox also accused Keating of plagiarizing 18 passages from Argo's business plan and said the defendants concealed communications using personal emails with subject lines including “Irish soda bread recipe” and “Project 007.”
On the damages side, Cox requested $293.8 million for lost profits, $286.3 million for the lost value of Argo's surety business, $9.5 million in expenses, and $1.3 million representing Farina and Keating's salaries, on top of $316.3 million in punitive damages sought by Argo Group.
Dual North America, which is part of London-based Howden Group Holdings, maintained it had no contractual or legal duty preventing it from hiring Argo's at-will employees and denied taking or using any of Argo's confidential information. Farina and Keating, represented by attorney Steve Chiscano, challenged the enforceability of Argo's employee and customer nonsolicitation agreements as overly broad and unreasonable, and said problems at Argo, including management turnover, the departure of experienced employees, a rating downgrade and the company's potential sale, prompted their own exits. Chiscano called the two men “honorable men” with “unblemished” careers. Farina is a former Argo executive from New Jersey, while Keating previously worked for Argo in Illinois.
What Happens Next
Judge Jimenez ordered Argo and Dual North America back into mediation with attorney Bill Ford. Cedillo said Dual is prepared to go to trial again if necessary, and the case may return to court if that mediation fails.
Disputes over mass employee departures and alleged trade-secret theft are not unique to San Antonio's insurance sector. Earlier this year, AssuredPartners of California Insurance Services sued The Liberty Company Insurance Brokers and five former employees, alleging Liberty hired at least 47 AssuredPartners employees in just nine months and that departing staff steered client accounts to Liberty before formally resigning, according to Insurance Business. Whether Argo and Dual settle their dispute in mediation or head back before a jury remains unresolved for now.
