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Professor French releases latest treatise with help from students


UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – While building the foundation of their legal education, Penn State Law students can also gain practical experience through hands-on work with our faculty of prominent legal scholars and leading practitioners. Christopher C. French, professor of practice at Penn State Law in University Park, recently provided that opportunity to three current students.  

French is the general editor of the 2020 edition of the LexisNexis Practice Guide: New Appleman Pennsylvania Insurance Law, published by LexisNexis, a worldwide leader in primary and secondary legal publications. He was assisted in his work on this latest edition by Penn State Law 2L students Garvey McKee, Emma Robertson, and Anthony Zarillo. 

“Garvey, Emma, and Anthony were each responsible for updating the legal research for four chapters in the treatise. I could not have been more pleased with their work. They did a fantastic job,” said French. 

The 780-page treatise is designed specifically for Pennsylvania attorneys and professionals in the insurance field. It is an expansive practice guide that encompasses most aspects of insurance coverage practice and litigation across all major lines of personal, professional, and commercial insurance. Each chapter contains thorough legal analysis, in addition to practice tips and relevant forms and checklists, on a broad range of insurance topics, including: 

  • how and where insurance is regulated; 

  • types of insurance policies and coverages; 

  • policy formation and sale; 

  • extra-contractual liability; 

  • exclusions and policy conditions; and 

  • litigating insurance matters. 

The publication is part of the national New Appleman insurance series, providing an overview of insurance law, lines of coverage, and insurance litigation in the state of Pennsylvania. 

French has written extensively in the area where insurance law intersects with contract and tort law, and he currently teaches contracts, torts, trial advocacy, and insurance law. He has published numerous articles in law review journals at Duke University, Georgia State University, University of Nevada, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, and University of Virginia, among other law schools, and he is a co-author of Insurance Law in a Nutshell (West 2016). He is also the author of an Insurance Law casebook, Insurance Law and Practice: Cases, Materials & Exercises (West 2d ed. 2020).  

His work has been cited by at least twenty-four courts, including the Second Circuit, Tenth Circuit, and the Supreme Courts of New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia, as well the Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance.  

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