The Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation celebrated more than $670,000 in IICF Community Grants awarded across the region to 78 nonprofit partners at its 11th annual IICF Western Division Horizon Award Gala.
The event was held drew insurance leaders from across the Western U.S., along with IICF’s nonprofit partners, to celebrate their efforts to help local communities.
The IICF Western Division also bestowed its Golden Horizon Award on Loren Nickel, director, business risk and insurance at Alphabet Inc., parent company of Google. The IICF Golden Horizon Award honors those within the insurance community who have demonstrated philanthropic leadership. Nickel’s risk and insurance career spans nearly 30 years.
Additionally, the gala recognized Tierra del Sol as the evening’s featured nonprofit. Based in Sunland, Calif., Tierra del Sol helps those with developmental disabilities through programs focused on workforce development, academic achievement and careers in the arts.
Proceeds from the 2026 IICF Western Division Horizon Award Gala benefit the IICF Community Grants Program, which supports Western U.S. regional and local nonprofit partners focused on children at risk, education and human services. Since 2014, IICF’s Western Division has granted more than $6.3 million to hundreds of nonprofits.
The IICF is a nonprofit established in 1994, contributing more than $55 million in community grants along with 400,000 volunteer hours by more than 130,000 industry professionals.
The city of Baltimore suffered a defeat in its efforts to address the opioid epidemic last week when the Maryland Supreme Court vacated a $152 million public nuisance verdict won by the city against drug distributors McKesson and AmerisourceBergen.
The state’s high court erased the verdict and returned the case to the Baltimore City Circuit Court, ordering that court to follow the high court’s March 2026 opinion (Express Scripts, Inc., et al. v. Anne Arundel County) in which it answered “no” to the question of whether the actions of drug distributors can constitute an actionable public nuisance, which was the legal basis for city’s suit.
The high court in answering that question for a federal court found that companies that have legal licenses to distribute controlled substances cannot be held liable for misuse of those legal drugs as a public nuisance under Maryland common law.
“Maryland has not expanded the public nuisance doctrine beyond the traditional historical principles embodied in the common law—namely, that a public nuisance action was not regarded as a tort but was instead a public action by a government entity to pursue criminal prosecutions or seek injunctive relief to abate harmful conduct. The Court has never recognized a government actor’s ability to recover damages for public nuisance,” the high court said in Express Scripts.