Pete Thompson
Pete Thompson is a deeply experienced counselor and litigator whose practice is focused on complex insurance coverage issues involving businesses and professionals. He has a long track record of successfully representing some of the nation’s leading insurers in coverage and extracontractual disputes nationwide, while also maintaining a selective practice representing business and personal clients in insurance-related matters. He also has served as an arbitrator in insurance coverage disputes.
His experience on the carrier side covers a wide range of policy types, including directors and officers liability, professional liability, general liability, and umbrella and excess coverages, among many others. He has a long list of notable litigation victories to his credit, among them a unanimous Tenth Circuit victory in a case involving a $750 million bad faith claim against a professional liability insurer, and a unanimous Eighth Circuit victory in an “excess versus primary” dispute arising from a $46 million verdict in an underlying wrongful death case. He is also frequently called upon to prepare complex coverage opinions and recommend resolution strategies to his insurer clients. Pete also has been retained on many occasions by business and personal clients who need advocacy from an experienced insurance coverage attorney in forging resolutions of complex insurance-related disputes and claims. For example, for almost twenty years, he has provided insurance counseling to two leading DC-area real estate developers, successfully resolving matters ranging from construction defect claims to business interruption losses and title insurance disputes.
Prior to forming Sperduto Thompson & Gassler in 2013, Pete was a founding partner of the Washington, D.C. law firm of Thompson, Loss & Judge, and before that practiced for eighteen years, seven of them as Managing Partner, with the Washington, D.C., law firm of Ross, Dixon & Masback (later known as Ross, Dixon & Bell). He began his legal career in his native Cincinnati, Ohio, with the firm of Paxton & Seasongood, where his early litigation assignments ranged from handling trials and appeals in local courts to assisting in major cases that included, among others, litigation arising from high-rise fires at the MGM Grand and Las Vegas Hilton hotels and from a tragic Cincinnati rock concert that claimed the lives of eleven young people.
Pete has been listed by Washington, D.C. Super Lawyers in every year since the honor’s inception in 2007.
Outside of his legal pursuits, he enjoys rowing, sailing, music, and spending time with family and friends at his family’s summer cottage in Northern Michigan. He is married to Rebecca Terry, a physician.