Elizabeth Graddy

Elizabeth Graddy, managing partner of the firm’s Atlanta office, specializes in representing life, disability, and health insurers, including both managed care and point-of-service, in their highest-stakes cases. Her practice centers on trial and appellate work in federal and state courts in Georgia, Florida, and New York. Her focus on first-party insurance issues includes deep expertise in the No Surprises Act, ERISA, the Medicaid and Medicare Acts, state insurance codes, and common-law good faith principles, among others, and her work frequently involves insurer-provider disputes over right-of-payment and rate-of-payment, insurer-insured litigation over coverage, and interpleader proceedings.

In addition to complex first-party insurer litigation and wide-ranging appellate litigation, Ms. Graddy has extensive experience handling adversary proceedings in bankruptcy and arbitration matters in various contexts. Ms. Graddy also represents technology companies in business-to-business and consumer disputes, and her practice covers technology-specific areas, such as intellectual property rights, teaming, and development, as well as broader commercial problems, such as consumer disputes, breach of contract, corporate governance, and fraud.

In addition to life, disability, and health insurers, Ms. Graddy has defended Fortune 100 media and technology companies and financial institutions in consumer class actions and other high-stakes matters. She also has worked extensively on captive insurance issues involving IRS oversight. She currently is developing litigation prevention systems for companies to employ technology and a holistic approach to limiting liability costs.

Prior to joining d’QM, Ms. Graddy started and managed the Atlanta office of SMGQ Law and, before that, successfully managed her own law firm. She previously worked at national law firms, including White & Case, and served as a prosecutor at the Bronx (N.Y.) District Attorney’s office. Because she began her career as a generalist and was required to master a variety of substantive areas of law, her specializations are grounded in a particularly strong foundational understanding of the legal landscape, and she has often been called upon by other attorneys to consult on difficult cases.

Ms. Graddy earned dual bachelor’s degrees from the University of Georgia and a master’s degree from the University of Southern California, in addition to her juris doctorate from New York University School of Law, and is licensed in Florida (2002), Georgia (1999), and New York (1998).

APPELLATE EXPERTISE     

Ms. Graddy’s appellate accomplishments include persuading the Georgia Supreme Court to issue its landmark decision in SRM Group, Inc. v. Travelers Prop. Casualty Co. of America, 308 Ga. 404 (2020), overruling cases including Byers v. McGuire Props., Inc., 285 Ga. 530, a victory that was bookended by reversals she won in 2019 and 2021 in Steedley v. Gilbreth, 359 Ga. App. 551 (2021), and Steedley v. Gilbreth, 352 Ga. App. 179 (2019).

Not limited to defending favorable lower court rulings, Ms. Graddy has a high rate of success in obtaining reversals.

Some notable appellate victories include obtaining reversals in Turner v. Knight, 369 So.3d 791 (Fla. 1st DCA 2023), Zahler v. Nat’l Collegiate Student Loan Trust 2006-1, 355 Ga. App. 458, (2020), and Kalpakchian v. Bank of America Corp., 832 Fed. Appx. 579 (11th Cir. 2020) (reversing as to Wells Fargo), obtaining a writ of prohibition from the Missouri Court of Appeals in Wills v. DePriest, 486 S.W. 3d 459 (Mo. App. 2015), and preparing prevailing briefs in, among others, Wills v. Arizon Structures Worldwide, L.L.C., 824 F.3d 541 (5th Cir. 2016), and Burch v. United Cable Television of Baltimore L.P., 391 Md. 687 (2006).

Ms. Graddy, who earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism, has been interviewed countless times by national and international news outlets such as ABC News, 48 Hours, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and Law360, and in various podcasts, and her deft crisis management has been lauded in the media relations and corporate communications field (see https://prcg.com/blog/georgia-homeowners-lawyer-communicates-deftly/).