David Langfitt
David Langfitt is a Philadelphia-area trial lawyer whose practice has focused on catastrophic personal injury, mass tort, and complex litigation. His work on football brain injury cases has been cited in court opinions, covered in national media, and presented as a model for plaintiff-side litigation strategy in this emerging area of law.
David has spent the better part of two decades building the legal infrastructure that makes these cases winnable — the witness testimony, the appellate authority, the trial record, and the deep familiarity with NCAA institutional knowledge. On October 23, 2025, a South Carolina jury returned an $18 million verdict in Geathers v. NCAA after deliberating for less than two hours. That verdict did not happen by accident. The Gaethers verdict is the first against NCAA for CTE in a former college football player. He is the first lawyer to win a jury verdict against the NCAA for CTE in a former college football player.
Beyond the courtroom, David serves as a Trustee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and is a founding board member and former Chair of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, the nation's largest public art program..
Mr. Langfitt served on the Court-appointed Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee in the NFL Concussion Litigation and Settlement. He is among the leaders for all ongoing claims and was recently appointed as an inaugural member to the NFL Concussion Settlement Player Advocacy Committee to help NFL Players navigate the Claims process that has become increasingly difficult due to audits, appeals, and increased restrictions.
Mr. Langfitt has personally represented 500-1000 former players against the NFL for latent brain disease. He continues to represent players on a daily basis against the NFL for the purpose of holding the NFL accountable to players.
Mr. Langfitt represents over a dozen players diagnosed with latent brain disease who played at the NCAA level but without significant playing time in the NFL. He is the premier attorney in this subset of personal injury litigation and has won one of the first jury verdicts ever against the NCAA for latent brain disease.
Mr. Langfitt is the lead attorney in the landmark case of Robert Geathers v. NCAA (Court of Common Pleas of Orangeburg Cty., South Carolina), which resulted in an $18,000,000 verdict for the Plaintiffs. Information about the signed verdict form and Judgment entered by the Court is available here. Other cases that David Langfitt is currently litigating against the NCAA are: Steven Schmitz v. NCAA (Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga Cty., Ohio), Mary Ann Gera v. NCAA (Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga Cty., Ohio), John Askin v. NCAA (Jefferson Circuit Court, Louisville, Kentucky), Kelly Merlino v. NCAA (New York State Supreme Court, New York County), Brandon Haw v. NCAA (Baltimore City), and Michael Hamlin v. NCAA (Court of Common Pleas of Darlington Cty., South Carolina), all of which are expected to go to trial in the next 1-2 years. Mr. Langfitt has litigated the Schmitz case since 2014 and obtained a watershed opinion in the Supreme Court of Ohio that can be found at Schmitz v. Natl. Collegiate Athletic Assn., 155 Ohio St.3d 389, 2018-Ohio-4391. Mr. Langfitt's oral argument in that case and the written opinion from the Supreme Court of Ohio are available here.
For many years, Mr. Langfitt served as nationwide patent litigation counsel to Q. I. Press Controls, an international technology company based in Holland. He represented Q. I. in multiple cases in courts throughout the United States that involved patent infringement and disputes that arose out of re-examinations within the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. Representative opinions can be found at Quad/Tech v. QI Press Controls, et al., 701 F. Supp. 2d 644 (E.D. Pa. 2010), aff’d, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 5729 (Fed. Cir. 2011) and QI Press Controls v. Lee, 752 F.3d 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2014).
Prior to founding Langfitt PLLC, Mr. Langfitt was a partner at Locks Law Firm in Philadelphia from 2010 until 2019, and a partner at Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads LLP in Philadelphia from 2000 to 2010. He was an associate at Montgomery, McCracken from 1992 to 2000. While at Montgomery, McCracken, Mr. Langfitt represented Federal Receiver David H. Marion, appointed at the request of the SEC and Federal District Court to recover, oversee, and distribute assets to investors defrauded by a Ponzi Scheme operated through Bentley Financial Services, Inc. of Paoli, PA. The Bentley Scheme was the largest Ponzi Scheme in the United States when it was discovered in 2001. Mr. Langfitt oversaw the recovery of $360,000,000 for the benefit of defrauded investors. This represented approximately ninety-three percent of the investors’ principal, one of the largest percentage recoveries ever. Mr. Langfitt also obtained a verdict against a bank and investment firm for aiding and abetting the scheme.
Mr. Langfitt has litigated under the Dragonetti Act, the Pennsylvania law that puts in statutory form the common law remedy for wrongful use of civil proceedings. Mr. Langfitt defended and counterclaimed on behalf of one of the nation’s most successful plaintiff’s law firms against a Fortune 500 company determined to ruin the firm for allegedly filing a series of class actions without a sound basis. The law firm settled the case on the eve of trial in a public settlement that included a $1,000 donation to the James Beasley School of Law at Temple University.
Mr. Langfitt has extensive experience litigating in bankruptcy courts and has represented creditors' committees (primarily members of the plaintiffs' asbestos litigation bar) in bankruptcies that were designed by corporations to repackage the corporate assets and liabilities of major entities to evade payment of claims, particularly asbestos claims. Some of those cases are In Re: Bondex (U.S. District Court, District of Delaware), In Re: Combustion Engineering (U.S. District Court, District of Delaware), and In Re: Nutraquest (U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey). He also served as lead litigation counsel to Celotex Corporation in wrongful death and personal injury cases brought in multiple states, including personal injury cases resulting from a 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island. He has negotiated settlements with USEPA regarding environmental regulations, control equipment, and clean air act issues.
While an associate at Montgomery, McCracken, Mr. Langfitt was habeas corpus counsel to former death row inmate Clifford Smith and succeeded in overturning the petitioner’s conviction for first degree murder in Smith v. Horn, 120 F.3d 400 (3d Cir. 1997).
Practice Areas
- Catastrophic Personal Injury
- Class Actions
- Commercial Litigation
- NFL Concussion Litigation
- NCAA Concussion Litigation
- Patent Litigation
- Securites
