United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit 

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No. 19-3511

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Verto Medical Solutions, L.L.C., a Delaware limited liability company; Seth 

Burgett

 Plaintiffs - Appellants

v.

Allied World Specialty Insurance Company, a member company of Allied World 

Assurance Company Holdings Ltd.

 Defendant - Appellee

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Appeal from United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis

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Submitted: January 12, 2021

Filed: May 11, 2021

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Before GRUENDER, BENTON, and STRAS, Circuit Judges. 

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STRAS, Circuit Judge.

The issue presented in this case is whether a directors-and-officers-liability 

policy required an insurer to indemnify and defend a company and its chief executive 

officer against claims brought by investors. Based on its conclusion that the policy 
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unambiguously excluded coverage, the district court granted the insurer’s motion to 

dismiss. We reverse because the policy is ambiguous on this point. 

I. 

Seth Burgett founded Verto Medical Solutions, L.L.C., a manufacturer of

headphones. During Burgett’s tenure as president and chief executive officer, Verto 

entered into an asset-purchase agreement with Harman International Industries, Inc. 

As part of the transaction, Harman agreed to make a series of “earn-out payments”

that were dependent on meeting certain financial goals. To gain approval of the deal 

from Verto’s investors, Burgett agreed to reallocate a portion of those payments to 

them. 

 The relationship between Harman and Verto soured quickly. A dispute arose 

when Harman kept money it had initially held back from the deal; refused to make

the first round of earn-out payments; and terminated Burgett, who had been hired by 

Harman. After some back and forth, the parties entered into a settlement agreement 

requiring a $3.5 million one-time payment to Verto. 

Burgett kept a large portion of the settlement money for himself rather than 

distributing the funds according to the reallocation agreements. Looking to recover 

what they believed they were owed, the investors sued Burgett in Iowa state court 

for fraud, promissory estoppel, unjust enrichment, conversion, and breach of both 

the reallocation agreements and his fiduciary duties to Verto and its investors. 

At that point, Allied World Specialty Insurance Company, Verto’s directorsand-officers-liability insurer, entered the picture. When Verto and Burgett asked for

indemnity and a defense against the claims, Allied refused to provide either. 

Defending the lawsuit without Allied’s help cost them more than $600,000 in 

attorney fees and expenses. 
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Now Verto and Burgett seek reimbursement from Allied. Originally filed in 

Missouri state court, their complaint alleges breach of contract and vexatious refusal 

to pay. Following removal, the district court, sitting in diversity and applying 

Missouri law, granted Allied’s motion to dismiss based on a contractual-liability 

exclusion in an endorsement to the insurance policy. 

II. 

Verto and Burgett take aim at the district court’s decision to dismiss their

complaint. Their theory is that the relevant portions of the insurance policy are 

ambiguous, so at a minimum it could not have been clear that they had failed to state 

a claim upon which relief could be granted. See Fed R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). Missouri 

law governs the policy, so we apply the plain and ordinary meaning of the terms 

used, looking to the policy “as a whole” and resolving any ambiguities in favor of 

the insured. Ritchie v. Allied Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., 307 S.W.3d 132, 135 (Mo. banc 

2009); see also Elec. Power Sys. Int’l, Inc. v. Zurich Am. Ins. Co., 880 F.3d 1007, 

1009 (8th Cir. 2018) (explaining that questions of contract interpretation are 

reviewed de novo). 

A.

Like many insurance policies, this one is complicated. As relevant here, the 

form policy contains an exclusion, assigned the letter “D,” which states that Allied 

would “not cover any Loss in connection with any Claim . . . based upon, arising 

from, or in consequence of any actual or alleged liability of any Insured under any 

express contract or agreement.” We call this standard contractual-liability exclusion 

“original D.”

The policy also has two key endorsements. The first, Endorsement 11, 

“delet[ed] Exclusion D. in its entirety and replac[ed] it with” a new contractualliability exclusion—labeled with, you guessed it, the letter “D.” “New D,” as we 

will call it, includes different exceptions but is otherwise identical to original D. 
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 Another endorsement, numbered 13, complicates matters further. As relevant 

here, it says that “Exclusions A., B., C. and D. . . . are deleted in their entirety and 

replaced” with a list of three new exclusions labeled “A,” “B,” and “C,” none of 

which directly addresses contractual liability.

Allied’s position from the beginning has been that Endorsement 11 

unambiguously excludes coverage because the claims against Burgett in the Iowa 

litigation were “based upon, arising from, or in consequence of actual or alleged 

liability of an Insured under” the reallocation agreements, which are “express 

contract[s].” Verto and Burgett, by contrast, argue that the policy is ambiguous on 

this point because Endorsements 11 and 13 each purport to replace an exclusion with 

the letter “D” without specifying which one. The district court, for its part, ruled 

that Endorsements 11 and 13 together replaced original D, leaving new D in its place 

and Verto and Burgett without coverage. See United Fire & Cas. Co. v. Titan 

Contractors Serv., Inc., 751 F.3d 880, 883–84 (8th Cir. 2014) (applying Missouri 

law) (explaining that an insurer owes no duty to defend and, consequently, no duty 

to indemnify if the claims “fall unambiguously within” an exclusion). 

B. 

 If the insurance policy seems unclear, it is. Endorsement 13 injected

“uncertainty” by deleting Exclusion D, but then failing to specify which one: original

D, new D, or both. Ritchie, 307 S.W.3d at 135 (quotation marks omitted) (explaining 

that “ambiguity exists when there is duplicity . . . in the meaning of the language in 

the policy” (quotation marks omitted)). We cannot rule out the possibility, in other 

words, that the endorsements deleted and replaced original D and new D, leaving 

the policy without a contractual-liability exclusion.1

1

As Allied points out, Endorsements 11 and 13 became effective on the same 

date. For this reason, we cannot rely on the canon that “the contract last executed, 

if valid, . . . supersede[s] the first to the extent that the two are inconsistent.” Berry 

v. Crouse, 376 S.W.2d 107, 112 (Mo. 1964); cf. Noonan v. Am. Fam. Mut. Ins. Co., 

924 F.3d 1026, 1029 (8th Cir. 2019) (applying Minnesota law) (ignoring the 
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In fact, the policy “is reasonably open to [at least two] different 

constructions.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). The first is that Endorsement 11

deleted and replaced original D with new D, and then Endorsement 13 replaced new

D with nothing. Another is the one adopted by the district court, which is that 

Endorsements 11 and 13 together replaced original D with new D. With one 

reasonable construction potentially covering contractual-liability claims and the 

other excluding them, the policy is ambiguous. See Am. Home Assur. Co. v. Pope, 

591 F.3d 992, 1001 (8th Cir. 2010) (applying Missouri law) (explaining that a policy 

is ambiguous when it “leav[es] open a question of what it does and does not cover”).

Missouri law tells us what to do next. When an ambiguity exists, we must 

construe it against the insurer, the policy’s drafter, even if extrinsic evidence of the 

parties’ intent is available. See Burns v. Smith, 303 S.W.3d 505, 511–12 (Mo. banc

2010). Under this rule, called contra proferentem, we adopt the construction that 

“furnish[es]” coverage to Verto and Burgett—in this case, the one in which neither

original D nor new D exists. Id. at 512 (quotation marks omitted). On remand, 

Allied can continue to argue that other exclusions apply, but just not either of those. 

III. 

We accordingly reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for 

further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

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sequencing of endorsements when the terms of the insurance policy could be 

reconciled without considering this canon). We also have to read the policy as a 

whole, so we cannot simply give priority to Endorsement 11 over Endorsement 13, 

as Allied wants us to do. See Todd v. Mo. United Sch. Ins. Council, 223 S.W.3d 156, 

163 (Mo. banc 2007).