Elderidge Nichols

Elderidge Nichols represents insurers in high-exposure, complex insurance coverage litigation in state and federal courts. His practice primarily focuses on directors and officers liability, professional liability, and bad faith claims. Elderidge has experience in complex insurance coverage cases arising from opioid, toxic tort, environmental, and construction defect matters, as well.

Elderidge has served as second-chair trial counsel in a complex insurance coverage case involving the trigger, allocation, and exhaustion theories applied to progressive disease claims spanning multiple policy periods of a decades-long liability insurance coverage block.

Elderidge was selected by The National Black Lawyers as one of its “Top 40 Under 40” in Washington, DC for 2020.

• Represented insurer in a coverage and bad faith action involving whether a goods and products exclusion barred D&O insurance coverage for a government investigation of an insured organization that markets and sells opioid products, prevailing on cross-summary judgment motions. Sentynl Therapeutics, Inc. v. U.S. Specialty Ins. Co., 527 F. Supp. 3d 1203 (S.D. Cal. 2021), aff’d, No. 21-55370, 2022 WL 706941 (9th Cir. Mar. 9, 2022).
• Represented insurer in a coverage and bad faith action involving a recurrent D&O coverage issue regarding whether a D&O policy provides coverage for governmental investigations, prevailing on a motion to dismiss with the Court holding that there was no coverage for the $27 million the insured spent responding to an SEC Formal Order of Investigation. Hertz Glob. Holdings, Inc. v. Nat’l Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh, 530 F. Supp. 3d 447 (S.D.N.Y. 2021), reconsideration denied, No. 19-CV-6957 (AJN), 2022 WL 889209 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 25, 2022).
• Summary judgment and affirmance on appeal holding that CGL insurer had no duty to defend and no duty to indemnify opioid distributor against 77 underlying lawsuits filed mostly by government entities alleging that the distributor’s improper distribution of opioids injured people and caused the entities to incur various increased costs like additional police and ambulance services and economic losses like lost tax revenue and diminished property values. Motorists Mut. Ins. Co. v. Quest Pharms., Inc., 2021 WL 1794754 (W.D. Ky. May 5, 2021), reconsideration denied, 2021 WL 4513715 (Oct. 1, 2021), aff’d sub nom. Westfield Nat’l Ins. Co. v. Quest Pharms., Inc., 57 F.4th 558 (6th Cir. 2023).

• Panelist, “Claims Handling: Discovery and Privilege Disputes,” ABA Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee Seminar, Arizona, March 2020

• District of Columbia
• Delaware
• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware

• J.D., William & Mary School of Law, William & Mary Law Review
• B.A., Duke University

• Professional Liability Underwriting Society
• National Bar Association