Deborah Little

Deborah Little is a member of the prestigious Academy of Trial Lawyers of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and her general commercial litigation practice spans in excess of 30 years. She is licensed in both Pennsylvania and Florida and is co-located in the Firm’s Pittsburgh and Naples offices.

A main focus of Debbie’s current practice is fiduciary/trust litigation. She is the Dentons Cohen & Grigsby litigation liaison to the Dentons Family Office/High Net Worth Sector and routinely advises trustees who administer trusts created by high net worth individuals for the benefit of multiple generations of family beneficiaries and who regularly interface and coordinate with their family offices.  Representative litigation engagements have included:

• Represented a trust company accused of conflicts of interest and self-dealing in connection with private equity investments for a revocable trust
• Represented a corporate trustee of a charitable trust in a dispute with individual co-trustees concerning grantor intent and grant-making
• Represented individual trustees in a removal and surcharge action involving the administration of an intended grantor trust for a foreign individual
• Represented beneficiaries against individual trustees engaged in alleged self-dealing in connection with private equity investments
• Represented a corporate trustee adverse to contingent residuary beneficiaries who alleged that, along with its co-trustees, it abused its discretion in distributing all of the trust’s corpus to the primary beneficiary
• Represented a custodian of trust assets accused of permitting a trustee to loot a trust

Since early in her legal career, Debbie has also concentrated on insurance coverage litigation on behalf of carriers.  Representative engagements have included:

• Spearheaded defense of major carrier in coverage dispute involving CGL policies over decades and hundreds of Superfund sites nationwide; obtained carrier-favored opinion on sudden & accidental pollution exclusion
• Represented same carrier in similar actions involving a plant and landfill site, in one case, and plant site in another case
• Served as PA panel counsel for national family of carriers, writing coverage opinion letters and defending carrier in two coverage litigations involving construction accidents (collapse of a building into an excavation site; fatal fall into a municipal sewage tank while sewage plant was being upgraded)
• Represented insurer of school district in coverage dispute involving death of a student who was run over by a school bus while crossing the street to the school bus stop
• Represented title insurance carrier in coverage dispute involving property taken by adverse possession; obtained carrier-favorable opinion from PA Superior Court

Debbie currently serves on Dentons’ Florida team litigating disputes regarding coverage for business interruption due to COVID-19 and civil authority orders, under property insurance policies of a major family of carriers, with virus exclusions.

Debbie also has extensive experience with products liability litigation in the medical device, pharmaceutical and automotive industries. Examples include:

• Assisted an automobile manufacturer's national trial counsel to prepare for asbestos products liability trials across the country involving brakes and clutches.
• Served on a team of litigators representing automobile manufacturers in the discovery phase of more than 400 asbestos products liability actions statewide.
• Participated as a member of the litigation team that served as national counsel for a manufacturer of latex medical gloves in more than 400 complex medical device products liability actions, including a federal multi-district litigation.

Debbie was recently elected to the Allegheny County Bar Association's Judiciary Committee and will be serving a 3-year term as the Elder/Probate & Trust Representative on the Committee. She was also selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America© 2018-2021 editions in the Commercial Litigation category.

Whatever the subject matter of the case, Debbie can quickly get her arms around it, conduct effective cross examinations at depositions or trial, handle expert witnesses and persuade courts. Debbie enjoys the variety of work that she does and the people that she works with, and clients say that it shows.

• The advantage of a general commercial litigator is the breadth of experience she can bring to issue-spotting and strategizing. Familiarity with many areas of the law is the value added by a lawyer who is not too subject-specialized and whose litigation skills are her forte.