Practices:

• Litigation
  • Insurance and Financial Institutions

Experience

Stephen Berry specializes in insurance coverage and insurance bad-faith issues, with particular emphasis on construction defect and catastrophic property damage claims.  His practice includes litigation, coverage advice, and policy drafting. 

Mr. Berry has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America, in the practice area of Insurance Law, every year since 2007.  He wrote the only comprehensive book on Georgia liability insurance law; has published numerous articles on coverage for third-party construction defect and first-party property damage claims, and frequently speaks on those topics to public and private audiences.

Mr. Berry's experience includes:

• Coordination of major insurer's nationwide underwriting and claims practices regarding construction defect liability (including revision of policy forms, training of claims personnel, and strategic review of nationwide legal policies);
• Successful defense of insurer in appraisal and bad faith claim arising out of property damage caused by Hurricane Katrina to 50-building college campus in Mississippi;
• Reversing a $2 million "set-up" judgment against an insurer in the Supreme Court of Alabama;
• Successful challenge of several million-dollar “Coblentz” judgments in state and federal courts throughout Florida;
• Prevailing in multiple-party coverage dispute involving fatal aviation accident filed in two state courts in Louisiana;
• Winning summary judgment in a $7 million copyright/advertising insurance dispute filed in federal court in Georgia;
• Winning summary judgment for property management company sued in the Buckhead daytrader-shooting matter in Fulton County, Georgia; and
• Successful intervention on behalf of Ray Lewis' insurer in the civil trial arising out of the 2000 Super Bowl stabbings in Atlanta, Georgia.

During law school, Mr. Berry served on the Editorial Boards of the Virginia Journal of International Law and the Virginia Environmental Law Journal, and participated in the Moot Court Competition.  Before law school, Mr. Berry studied in Germany and Austria and earned a M.A. in European History.

Education

• J.D., University of Virginia School of Law, 1997
• M.A., University of Virginia, 1993
• B.A., University of Richmond, cum laude, 1992

Admitted

• Georgia
• Louisiana