About

David Langfitt has practiced complex commercial litigation and mass personal injury litigation for more than 28 years and focuses on litigation and trials involving numerous parties, claims, and courts, both state and federal. He has litigated a wide variety of complex cases involving mass tort claims, the federal securities laws, professional liability, legal malpractice, Pennsylvania's Dragonetti Act (an analog to the F. R. Civ. P. 11), merger agreements, pre-packaged bankruptcy plans, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and infringement of patents and copyrights.Mr. Langfitt currently spends most of his time focusing on large-scale catastrophic personal injury litigation involving both the National Football League and NCAA as defendants. He served on the Court-appointed Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee in the NFL Concussion Litigation and Settlement, which has become increasingly troublesome for players based on the resistance of the NFL to pay claims. He is among the leaders for all ongoing claims. He has personally represented more than a thousand former players against the NFL for latent brain disease and, while at his former law firm, received more awards for players than any other lawyer in the Settlement. He continues to represent hundreds of players against the NFL for the purpose of holding the NFL accountable to the players.In cases involving the NCAA, Mr. Langfitt represents former NCAA football players with latent brain disease. He is currently litigating pending cases against the NCAA for players in many different state courts. Mr. Langftt and his team of lawyers regularly evaluate these cases and determine whether they are willing to take the case and bring it to a trial by jury. Mr. Langfitt is the lead attorney in the cases of Steven Schmitz v. NCAA, (Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga Cty., Ohio), Mary Ann Gera v. NCAA, (Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga Cty., Ohio), John Askin v. NCAA, (Jefferson Circuit Court, Tenth Division, Louisville, Kentucky), Robert Geathers v. NCAA, (Court of Common Pleas of Orangeburg Cty., South Carolina), and Michael Hamlin v. NCAA, (Court of Common Pleas of Orangeburg Cty., South Carolina), all of which are pending cases and expected to go to trial in the near future. He has litigated the Schmitz case since 2014 and obtained a watershed opinion in the Supreme Court of Ohio that can be found at Schmitz v. Natl. Collegiate Athletic Assn., 155 Ohio St.3d 389, 2018-Ohio-4391, and can be reached here. Video of the oral argument is available on the website for the Supreme Court of Ohio and can be reached here.Mr. Langfitt is currently litigating a class action in the federal district court in Maryland titled Wilson, et al. v. Cordish, et al. On behalf of the plaintiff class, Mr. Langfitt has alleged large-scale violations of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).For many years, Mr. Langfitt served as nationwide patent litigation counsel to Q. I. Press Controls, an international technology company based in Holland. He represented Q. I. in multiple cases in courts throughout the United States that involved patent infringement and disputes that arose out of re-examinations within the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. Representative opinions can be found at Quad/Tech v. QI Press Controls, et al., 701 F. Supp. 2d 644 (E.D. Pa. 2010), aff’d, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 5729 (Fed. Cir. 2011) and QI Press Controls v. Lee, 752 F.3d 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2014).Prior to founding Langfitt PLLC, Mr. Langfitt was a partner at Locks Law Firm in Philadelphia from 2010 until 2019, and a partner at Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads LLP in Philadelphia from 2000 to 2010. He was an associate at Montgomery, McCracken from 1992 to 2000. While at Montgomery McCracken, Mr. Langfitt represented Federal Receiver David H. Marion, appointed at the request of the SEC and Federal District Court to recover, oversee, and distribute assets to investors defrauded by a Ponzi Scheme operated through Bentley Financial Services, Inc. of Paoli, PA. The Bentley Scheme was the largest Ponzi Scheme in the United States when it was discovered in 2001. Mr. Langfitt oversaw the recovery of $360,000,000 for the benefit of defrauded investors. This represented approximately ninety-three percent of the investors’ principal, one of the largest percentage recoveries ever. Mr. Langfitt also filed and successfully litigated multiple complaints against banks and others for aiding and abetting the scheme.Mr. Langfitt has extensive experience litigating in bankruptcy courts and has represented creditors' committees (primarily members of the plaintiffs' asbestos litigation bar) in bankruptcies that were designed by corporations to repackage the corporate assets and liabilities of major entities to evade payment of claims, particularly asbestos claims. Some of those cases are In Re: Bondex (U.S. District Court, District of Delaware), In Re: Combustion Engineering (U.S. District Court, District of Delaware), and In Re: Nutraquest (U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey). He also served as lead litigation counsel to Celotex Corporation in multiple wrongful death and personal injury cases brought in multiple states, including personal injury cases resulting from a 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island. He has negotiated settlements with USEPA regarding environmental regulations, control equipment, and clean air act issues.Mr. Langfitt has experience litigating under the Dragonetti Act, the Pennsylvania law that puts in statutory form the common law remedy for wrongful use of civil proceedings. Mr. Langfitt defended and counterclaimed on behalf of one of the nation’s most successful plaintiff’s law firms against a Fortune 500 company determined to ruin the firm for allegedly filing a series of class actions without a sound basis. The law firm settled the case triumphantly on the eve of trial in a public settlement that included a $1,000 donation to the James Beasley School of Law at Temple University.While an associate at Montgomery McCracken, Mr. Langfitt was Habeas Corpus counsel to former death row inmate Clifford Smith and succeeded in overturning the petitioner’s conviction for first degree murder in Smith v. Horn, 120 F.3d 400 (3d Cir. 1997).Outside of his legal practice, Mr. Langfitt is a trustee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a trustee of The Episcopal Academy. He was a founding board member of the Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia and served as Board Chair for more than ten years. He is also the author of the novel Winnabow, a legal thriller available on-line at Amazon Books and here.

Practices Areas

Personal Injury

Brain injury

Language

English

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