The Premises and Retail Liability Practice is experienced in the handling of all aspects of retail liability claims, including but not limited to:
- Premises liability and its various subtypes (sidewalk defects, ice/snow, spilled substances, employee negligence, etc.)
- Professional liability within the retail industry and specific to individual retailers. Examples include pharmaceutical malpractice, automobile mechanical malpractice, service station malpractice and sales misrepresentations
- Retail theft and compliance with the Retail Theft Acts under various States
- Product liability and vendors endorsements
- Risk Transfer issues for landlords and tenants
- Fraudulent claims, which are handled in conjunction with our firm's Special Investigations Unit
Our attorneys also provide clients with liability prevention techniques and specialized seminars that can be conducted at the client's business location.
Members of the group share information on applicable defenses, changes in law, trial tactics and strategies, and research on issues of the law. Each office has access through our state-of-the-art computer system to a bank of briefs and other materials for the expedient and efficient handling of retail claims from inception to conclusion.
All cases entrusted to us are handled in the most efficient and cost-effective manner in conjunction with the goals of the client. At each of our offices, there is at least one shareholder and one associate who are members of this practice area. Each case referral is either assigned directly to a shareholder or, in lower-exposure matters, an associate whose work would be overseen by a shareholder in the group.
We are associated and active with retail and hospitality committees within organizations such as CLM as well as a founding member of the National Retail & Restaurant Defense Association. Our attorneys are also actively involved in the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business & Industry and the Pennsylvania Retailers Association.
Results
Thought Leadership
Case Law Alerts
Dead End for Plaintiff: No Duty, No Vicarious Liability, No Causation in Ohio Premises Liability Ruling
November 3, 2026
Carol Quinlan-Hall was injured when the headstone marking her father's grave fell on her while she and her husband were visiting the gravesite at Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery Association ("SPPCA"). She sued SPPCA and Carl Slusher, the cemetery's sexton, alleging he had negligently repaired a tilt in the headstone years earlier and that this repair was the cause of the eventual collapse. Slusher denied it, testifying that he was never made aware of any issue with the stone or its foundation and never performed repair work for an individual plot holder, since plot holders were required to purchase their own headstones and arrange installation through third-party vendors. SPPCA's bylaws confirmed this division: the sexton's duties covered general grounds upkeep and placing headstone foundations, but were silent on repairing or installing the stones themselves. The trial court granted summary judgment for the defense on three grounds, and the First District affirmed. On duty, the court held SPPCA owed no duty to Hall because it neither owned nor controlled the headstone, had no actual or constructive notice of any hazardous condition, and faced no history of similar incidents to make the harm foreseeable. This reinforces that a cemetery's—or, more broadly, any property owner's—duty tracks the scope of what it actually owns or controls; a family-purchased monument installed by outside vendors falls outside that scope even though it sits on the owner's land. On respondeat superior, the court rejected vicarious liability against SPPCA even assuming Slusher had done the alleged repair, because that work fell outside the duties the bylaws actually assigned him and mere on-site presence or opportunity was not enough. On causation, the court found the claim too speculative to survive summary judgment. Hall herself testified the tilt was corrected after the alleged repair and stayed corrected for somewhere between two and five years, with no observed defect during frequent visits in between. Citing Ohio's rule that a negligence claim cannot rest on conjecture, the court held that bridging a multi-year gap between an alleged negligent act and the injury was too speculative to reach a jury. The case is notable less for breaking new ground than for stacking three independent, generally-applicable defenses—no duty/no notice, no respondeat superior, and no causation—any one of which alone would have been dispositive. That makes it a useful all-purpose citation for insurers and defense counsel facing negligence claims built on attenuated, long-past conduct, whether or not a cemetery is involved.
Case Law Alerts
Delaware Superior Court Holds No Coverage for Opioid Litigation Under CGL Policies Despite Choice-of-Law Challenge
November 3, 2026
The Delaware Superior Court in In re Albertsons Opioid Insurance Litigation reaffirmed and expanded Delaware’s growing body of opioid insurance coverage jurisprudence, holding that commercial general liability had no duty to defend or indemnify Albertsons in more than 100 opioid-related governmental lawsuits. The Court rejected Albertsons' attempt to avoid the Delaware Supreme Court's decisions in ACE American Insurance Co. v. Rite Aid Corp. and In re CVS Opioid Insurance Litigation through a choice-of-law argument, finding no meaningful conflict between Delaware, California, and Idaho law. The decision further solidifies Delaware as a jurisdiction that narrowly construes coverage for governmental opioid claims seeking recovery of public expenditures and economic losses. Albertsons operates retail pharmacies throughout the United States and, like many pharmacy chains, has been named in numerous lawsuits arising from the opioid epidemic. Governmental entities, including states, counties, municipalities, and tribes, sought recovery for costs allegedly incurred as a result of opioid addiction, treatment, law enforcement efforts, public health programs, and other opioid-related expenditures. Albertsons tendered more than 100 underlying opioid lawsuits to its commercial general liability insurers and sought defense and indemnity coverage under more than 100 policies spanning multiple policy periods. The insurers filed declaratory judgment actions in Delaware seeking rulings that no coverage existed. Albertsons acknowledged that recent Delaware Supreme Court decisions in Rite Aid and CVS presented significant obstacles to coverage. Rather than attempting to distinguish those cases on the underlying allegations, Albertsons argued that California or Idaho law should apply because those states purportedly interpreted "damages because of bodily injury" more broadly than Delaware. The Court granted summary judgment to the insurers and denied Albertsons’ motion for partial summary judgment, first holding that there was no actual conflict between Delaware law and the laws of California or Idaho. Under Delaware's choice-of-law framework, the court need not conduct a full "most significant relationship" analysis unless competing states' laws would produce different outcomes. Here, the court found that California, Idaho, and Delaware all apply materially similar insurance-coverage principles, including: giving policy language its plain meaning; construing ambiguities in favor of the insured; interpreting coverage broadly and exclusions narrowly; and recognizing the broad nature of the duty to defend. Having determined Delaware law applied, the court found the case straightforward. The Court emphasized that Rite Aid and CVS establish that coverage for damages "because of bodily injury" requires a direct connection between the claimed damages and specific bodily injuries. Following Rite Aid and CVS, the Court held these damages were too attenuated from any specific bodily injury to trigger coverage. Consistent with CVS, the Court held that where the nature of the claims asserted falls entirely outside policy coverage, courts may determine both defense and indemnity obligations as a matter of law. Because the underlying lawsuits sought only uncovered economic losses, no duty to indemnify existed. Albertsons signals that Delaware courts are unlikely to entertain efforts by pharmacy defendants to relitigate issues already settled by Rite Aid and CVS. Unless an underlying opioid complaint seeks damages tied to specific identifiable bodily injuries or property damage, insurers will have strong grounds to deny coverage under standard commercial general liability forms.
