In The Saint Consulting Group Inc. v. Endurance American Specialty Insurance Company Inc., the 1st Circuit also denied Saint's request for coverage of the complaint relating to ex-employee Leigh Mayo's purportedly misappropriated documents, ruling that its errors and omissions policy only covered “professional services,” and that “it is hard to see how the 'negligent' discarding of old files by a consulting firm qualifies as its performance of 'professional services.'”

The court's interpretation is in line with previous case law regarding the definition of “professional services” for the purposes of a professional liability policy, according to Traub Lieberman Straus & Shrewsberry Partner Brian Margolies, who notes that the term generally refers to a technical or specialized skill. “If [Saint] were a document retention company and somebody stole [its] documents and they were sued for that, that might be covered under a professional liability policy,” he says. “But this type of dispute was not anything that implicated Saint's real estate consulting business or practices, so that wasn't a professional service.”