Louis C. Long
LOUIS C. LONG is a partner of Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti, LLP, where he serves as Chair of the Insurance Coverage and Appellate Practice Group and a member of the Litigation Defense, Construction, Transportation and Risk Management Practice Groups.
Upon joining the firm in October of 2005, Mr. Long added depth and experience to Pietragallo’s Insurance Coverage practice. He is routinely engaged to provide insurance coverage analysis and claims handling guidance. Mr. Long has assisted in drafting commercial general liability and automobile liability policy language. He has authored countless legal opinions construing and applying such policies, as well as directors and officers insurance, errors and omissions insurance and uninsured and underinsured motorists coverages. His insurance coverage litigation includes prosecution and defense of declaratory judgment actions, garnishment actions, breach of contract claims and bad faith.
Matters representative of Mr. Long’s insurance coverage practice include:
- Successfully representing two excess, general liability insurers in protracted multi-party declaratory judgment actions involving issues of coverage for multi-million-dollar antitrust judgments. Case held that commercial general liability insurance did not afford coverage for the loss.
- Successfully representing insurer in environmental coverage litigation in which insurer issued more than 10 excess umbrella policies to owner of Superfund site. Obtained summary judgment in insurer’s favor, eliminating all but one policy from case and negotiating settlement of claims arising under remaining policy for fraction of total potential exposure.
Mr. Long has argued more than 200 appeals of various types in four state court systems, three federal circuits and the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also served as a consultant for strategic planning for appeals and is often referred for appeals originating outside of the firm. Mr. Long has practiced in the areas of insurance coverage, governmental liability, products liability, medical professional liability, public utilities, criminal law, commercial litigation, general negligence, legal malpractice, workers’ compensation, civil rights, church litigation, errors and omissions, and motorsports litigation.
Significant cases representative of Mr. Long’s appellate practice include:
- Successfully representing a hospital in the first case to reach the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on the issue of health care provider’s liability under products liability theories. The case involved the sale of an allegedly defective prosthesis and established rule that hospitals would not be strictly liable in tort for sale of devices that fail and injure patients.
- Successfully representing a natural gas company sued by a municipality for the cost to clean up the site of a gas main explosion. This case established rule that, absent statutory authority, a governmental body could not assert common law claim for cost of emergency services.
Mr. Long has spoken before a number of professional and business associations and written on topics including appellate practice and procedure, insurance law developments, bad faith and ethics.
Mr. Long is a director of the Pennsylvania Defense Institute and serves as Co-Chair of its Amicus Committee. In addition, as a member of the Allegheny County Bar Association, Mr. Long has served on the Committee on Opportunities for Minorities in the Legal Profession and the Appellate Practice Committee. He is also a member of the board of directors of the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum Foundation, Inc., and currently serves as its Vice-President.
He received his J.D. degree, cum laude, from Temple University. Mr. Long received his B.A. degree from Temple University, where he was a President’s Scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Mr. Long is admitted to practice in all state and federal courts in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fourth and Sixth Circuits and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mr. Long is also an approved ADR Neutral for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania and he has been called upon to mediate insurance coverage disputes pending before that court.
Presentations
In Search of a Workable Model for Assessing Conspicuity of Policy Language (was presented to the Mealey's Insurance Policy Wording Conference on September 20, 2006 at the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia.)
Article in The Voice, a publication of DRI.
Representative Cases, Publications and Speaking Engagements