Professor French releases second edition of insurance law casebook

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Penn State Law in University Park Professor of Practice Christopher French has released the second edition of his insurance law casebook, Insurance Law and Practice: Cases, Materials, and Exercises.

The casebook showcases French’s more than two decades of experience litigating and trying insurance coverage claims prior to becoming a full-time law professor nine years ago, which results in the casebook being written from both academic and practice-oriented perspectives. The casebook includes several cases that French litigated from trial until final resolution at the state supreme court level and includes the following traditional Insurance Law topics:

• Insurance contract formation and interpretation;
• insurance regulation;
• insurable interest;
• bad faith insurer breaches;
• property insurance;
• life insurance;
• disability insurance;
• commercial general liability insurance;
• claims made liability insurance; and
• auto insurance.

Also, unique to this casebook, sections on choice of law, personal and advertising liability coverage for intentional torts and intellectual property infringement claims, proofs of loss, examinations under oath, efficient proximate cause, ensuing loss clauses, and business interruption insurance are included. Additionally, the book lends itself to teaching insurance law as a traditional doctrinal course or as an experiential course because it includes numerous practice-oriented exercises that can be assigned throughout the course.

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. He is also the General Editor of New Appleman Pennsylvania Insurance Law Practice Guide. 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. Before coming to Penn State Law, French taught at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Villanova Law School, and he was a former partner at K&L Gates LLP where he worked as a commercial litigator.