Partner
Christopher Cerullo is a partner at Sanchez Maselli Trial Attorneys. He represents self-insured corporations, business entities, insurance carriers, and individuals in all stages of litigation in New Jersey, New York, and Florida state and federal courts — in matters involving premises liability, auto negligence, construction defect, products liability, New York Labor Law, gig economy liability, professional liability, trucking and transportation, and insurance coverage disputes.
Christopher mediates and arbitrates cases, conducts and defends depositions of fact and expert witnesses, and researches, drafts, and argues dispositive and pre-trial motions. He regularly prepares coverage opinions on personal home and auto, business auto, commercial general liability, and rideshare policies, and he has drafted and argued the appeals of two separate coverage matters before the New Jersey Appellate Division.
Before entering private practice, Christopher served as judicial law clerk to the Honorable Thomas F. Brogan, P.J.Cv., in the Superior Court of New Jersey (Passaic Vicinage). He earned his Juris Doctor from Fordham University School of Law, where he was an Associate Editor of the Fordham Law Review and published a note on incorporating implicit bias into Title VII’s intentional-discrimination framework, and his honors Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, in Foreign Languages & Literatures from the University of Delaware.
Publication: “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist? Reconciling Implicit Bias and Title VII,” 82 Fordham L. Rev. 127 (2013).
Representative Results
Successfully argued and defended an appeal on whether the at-issue commercial general liability policy and its exclusions required the insurer to cover its named insured for first-party damages arising from building code violations.
Successfully defended an appeal before the Second Department of the New York Appellate Division after a pre-answer dismissal of the complaint based on the statute of limitations.
Won summary judgment for a big-box retailer in federal court by defeating the mode-of-operation theory and any notice of a dangerous condition, and for a commercial property owner in state court under the “storm in progress” doctrine.
Settled a federal product liability claim at mediation for ten percent of the initial demand based on a favorable pre-deposition expert inspection, and a state court product claim for nuisance value following a pre-deposition medical record review on causation.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome; every matter turns on its own facts. More firm results →
Methodologies. The Best Lawyers list is issued by BL Rankings, LLC; a description of the selection methodology can be found at bestlawyers.com/About/MethodologyBasic.aspx. The Super Lawyers list is issued by Thomson Reuters; a description of the selection methodology can be found at superlawyers.com/about/selection_process.html. The Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings list is issued by Martindale-Hubbell; a description of the selection methodology can be found at martindale.com/ratings-and-reviews. No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
