Jacob (Jack) Cohn has decades of experience in all aspects of trial and appellate practice in a variety of complex, high-stakes cases. He focuses on appeals, representation of insurers in mass tort and other bankruptcies, and insurance coverage litigation. Before Plevin & Turner, Jack co-chaired the Appellate Practice Group of a national firm for several years.

In his appellate engagements, Jack has briefed and/or argued myriad cases nationwide before state and federal appellate courts, including arguing for an insurer in the first asbestos bankruptcy case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. He achieved a federal appellate “trifecta” of sorts by additionally arguing before an en banc federal circuit court as well as arguing a question of state law certified by the Eleventh Circuit before the Florida Supreme Court. Jack also has experience representing a client before the Solicitor General of the United States where the Supreme Court called for the views of that office at the certiorari petition stage.

Jack is frequently asked to take over cases on appeal from trial counsel, whether as “rescue counsel” or to preserve a successful trial-level result. He is also regularly retained before the underlying trial to help ensure that potential appellate issues are recognized and properly preserved, and to consult on, and brief, pre- and post-trial motions on critical legal issues.

Jack has obtained precedent-setting results for his clients in numerous legal areas including bankruptcy, insurance coverage, creditors’ rights, and constitutional law.

Highlights include:

Bankruptcy & Creditors Rights

• Jack argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Travelers Indem. Co. v. Bailey, 557 U.S. 137 (2009), involving issues of bankruptcy jurisdiction and the finality of the original 1986 Johns Manville asbestos insurance channeling injunction. On remand to the Second Circuit, he obtained a ruling that his client was never properly made a party to the original proceedings in a manner consistent with constitutional due process and therefore was not bound by the 1986 injunction. Travelers Cas. &Sur. Co. v. Chubb Indem. Ins. Co. (In re Johns-Manville Corp.), 600 F.3d 135 (2d Cir. 2010).

• After convincing the Third Circuit, at panel argument, to take the rare step of sua sponte ordering an en banc rehearing, Jack argued and won a 14-0 decision overruling a 30-year old precedent, resolving a deepening circuit split regarding the interpretation of a crucial provision of the FDCPA. Riccio v. Sentry Credit, Inc., 954 F.3d 582 (3d Cir. 2020) (en banc).

• Jack twice successfully defended the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s confession of judgment and garnishment procedures. Jordan v. Fox Rothschild, O’Brien & Frankel, 20 F.3d 1250 (3d Cir. 1994); Sheehan v. Mellon Bank, 118 F.3d 1577 (3d Cir.1997 (Table)).

Insurance Coverage

• In a major victory for excess carriers, Jack established Pennsylvania and Third Circuit precedent for the proposition that excess insurers with optional defense provisions have no obligation to participate in the defense of their insureds. AstenJohnson, Inc. v. Columbia Cas. Co., 562 F.3d 213 (3d Cir. 2009).

• As trial and appellate counsel for an insurer in Walter E. Campbell Co. v. U.S. Fire Ins. Co., 886 F.3d 346 (4th Cir. 2018), Jack obtained a series of pro-insurer rulings at the trial and appellate levels against a former major regional distributor and installer of Johns-Manville asbestos products, including reiterating Wallace & Gale’s rejection of policyholders’ “once an operations claim, always an operations claim” argument for expanding coverage under non-aggregated general liability limits, ruling that both indemnity and defense obligations are subject to pro rata allocation, and rejecting the policyholder’s argument that a new statute of limitations for challenging an insurer’s declarations of policy exhaustion applies each time a new claim is asserted.

• In another mass-tort situation, Jack saved an insurer tens of millions of dollars by obtaining a ruling that the insurer had no duty to defend a drug manufacturer in over 1,500 “Fen-Phen” diet drug products liability cases. Eon Labs Mfg., Inc. v. Reliance Ins. Co., 756 A.2d 889 (Del. 2000).

• Jack won Third Circuit affirmance of a ruling that a pollution exclusion contained in “Products/Completed Operations Liability” specialty policies barred coverage for bodily injury suits due to releases of ethylene oxide from an insured’s medical device manufacturing plant. Noetic Spec. Ins. Co. v. B. Braun Medical, Inc., No. 24-3138 (3d Cir., Dec. 30, 2025). The court rejected the insured’s arguments that the exclusion was ambiguous, that ethylene oxide is not a “pollutant,” and that a “regulatory clearance” exception to the pollution exclusion applied.

• Jack represented the insurer in Rancosky v. Wash. Nat’l Ins. Co., 170 A.3d 364 (Pa. 2017), where the Pennsylvania Supreme Court established the legal standard for “bad faith” under that state’s insurance bad faith statute. Rejecting arguments by the insured, backed by the plaintiffs’ and policyholders’ bars, to hold that mere negligence should suffice to expose insurers to punitive damages and attorneys’ fee awards, the court instead adopted a standard that was well within the national mainstream.

• Jack obtained Second Circuit affirmance of a ruling that the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center constituted one, rather than two, occurrences for insurance purposes, saving an insurance company $254 million. SR International Business Ins. Co., LTD. v. World Trade Center Properties, 467 F.3d 107 (2d Cir. 2006).

• Jack won summary judgment, and then prevailed on appeal before the Pennsylvania Superior Court, with the courts rejecting a homebuilder’s argument that CGL policies afford coverage for water damage caused by construction defects. Millers Capital Ins. Co. v. Gambone Brothers Development Co., 941 A.2d 706 (Pa. Super. 2007).

Jack has represented insurers in many asbestos and other bankruptcies, and related coverage litigation, including Johns Manville, W.R. Grace, Kaiser Aluminum, Federal- Mogul, Congoleum, GIT-NARCO, Fraser’s Boiler Services, Oglebay Norton, Quigley, THAN, Kentile, North Brothers, United Gilsonite, and Special Electric. Jack has also represented insurers in environmental “brown fields” bankruptcies as well as a case involving cadmium contamination at the facilities of a defunct solar panel manufacturer.

Being fluent in both bankruptcy and insurance, Jack understands the coverage issues and the endgame—and is sensitive to the repercussions that an insurer’s action (or inaction) in a bankruptcy court could have on simultaneous or subsequent state court coverage litigation.

Jack has been in the forefront of efforts to prevent and defeat collusive and unfair practices and procedures that seek to force insurers to fund the payment of trivial, and even spurious and fraudulent claims. Jack coauthored two law review articles on the need for tort reform to prevent claimant double-dipping and fraud between the tort system and 524(g) asbestos trusts.

As a result of his many years of experience and scholarship in the area of asbestos bankruptcies, Jack was asked to testify before the Ohio House of Representatives’ Judiciary and Ethics Committee in support of Ohio’s Asbestos Transparency Act, enacted in 2012, the first such law in the nation. Jack has co-authored several featured articles published in the American Bankruptcy Institute Journal and has spoken frequently on topics such as insurance coverage and policyholder bankruptcies at conferences for the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, the American Bankruptcy Institute, The American Bar Association’s Business Bankruptcy Committee, Perrin Conferences, and Mealey’s Lexis-Nexis Conferences. In the creditors’ rights arena, Jack has testified before a Canadian court as an expert on Pennsylvania’s confession of judgment laws and procedures.

Jack has been listed in Best Lawyers* in both Insurance Law (2016-2026) and Appellate Practice (2020-2024), in Pennsylvania Super Lawyers* (2006, 2011-2026), and in Who’s Who Legal: Insurance & Reinsurance (2016-2026). Jack is a past recipient of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Pro Bono Award.

*No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.

A description of the Martindale-Hubbell selection methodology can be found at: https://www.martindale.com/ratings-and-reviews/.

A description of Best Lawyers selection methodologies can be found at: https://www.bestlawyers.com/methodology.

The Super Lawyers® list is issued by Thomson Reuters. A description of the selection methodologies can be found at: https://www.superlawyers.com/about/selection_process.html.

Education & Admissions

Education

• University of Pittsburgh School of Law, J.D., cum laude

  •  University of Pittsburgh Journal of Law and Commerce, Associate Editor

     University of Pennsylvania, B.A., history

Admissions

• New York

• Pennsylvania

• New Jersey

Memberships

• Third Circuit Bar Association, founding member

• American Bankruptcy Institute