Gianelli & Morris, A Law Corporation

Focus and practice areas

The firm works in one field: California insurance law, on the side of policyholders. Its clients are people whose claims an insurer has delayed, underpaid or denied. Gianelli & Morris has practiced since 1979, which the firm counts as more than 40 years of work in this area.

The practice covers several kinds of insurance disputes. These include insurance bad faith, health insurance denials, life insurance denials and long-term disability claims. The firm also handles disputes over annuities and brings class actions. In my opinion, that mix points to a practice built around how insurers pay, or fail to pay, on the policies they sell.

Some of these matters fall under ERISA, the federal law that governs many employer group health and disability plans. The firm names ERISA-governed employer group policies among the cases it takes. Claims under that law follow their own steps, which I set out further down.

How the team is built

Gianelli & Morris names four attorneys on its site: Robert S. Gianelli, Alex Gianelli, Joshua S. Davis and Loring Rose. Robert S. Gianelli is a partner at the firm. The firm describes him as having decades of experience in California law, with work on its insurance bad faith cases and class actions against large insurers.

The site keeps the other profiles brief. It does not publish law schools or admission years for Alex Gianelli, Joshua S. Davis or Loring Rose. A reader meets the roster by name and by the field they share. What the pages do show is a small group organized around one type of case, which keeps the work close to a few hands.

The insurers it takes on

The firm lists disputes with several national carriers. Named on its pages are Anthem, Blue Shield, Kaiser, Aetna, CIGNA, United Healthcare and Allianz Life. That list spans large health insurers and, in Allianz Life, a life and annuity carrier.

These are the companies that write and administer the policies at the center of the firm's cases. Health plans handle medical claims and appeals. Life and annuity carriers hold products that pay out on death or over a set schedule. A firm that names these carriers is telling readers where its cases tend to land.

Policyholder-side work means the firm represents the insured. The client is the person or family who bought the coverage. In insurance litigation, that side of the table sets the kind of cases a firm takes and the arguments it makes.

How these claims generally work

The case types the firm names each follow their own path. The notes here are general background on how such matters usually proceed, and they are not claims about any single result.

Bad faith and denied claims

In a California bad faith case, the dispute is about how the insurer handled the claim. These cases look at the claim file, the policy wording and the insurer's own records. The question is whether the company acted reasonably when it paid, delayed or denied.

When an insurer acts in bad faith under California law, a policyholder may seek more than the value of the denied benefit. The state allows claims for other losses that flow from the denial. That difference is one reason a bad faith claim can be larger than a simple contract dispute.

ERISA and health plans

Health insurance denials often start with an appeal to the plan. If the plan comes through an employer, that review usually falls under ERISA. A policyholder generally has to finish the plan's internal appeals before filing suit. Those appeals build the record that a federal judge later reviews.

Under many ERISA plans, a court reviews the insurer's decision on the written record from the appeal. New evidence may not come in later. That rule puts weight on the appeal stage, where the file takes shape.

Disability, life and annuities

Long-term disability files tend to turn on medical evidence. They often include treatment records and reports about what work a person can still do. Life insurance disputes turn on the policy terms and the facts around the claim, such as the application or a lapse in premiums.

Annuity disputes look at a contract that pays income over time. Questions can turn on how the product was described at sale and how its terms apply years later. An unfair annuity claim asks whether the buyer got what the contract promised.

Class actions

Class actions group many policyholders with a shared complaint into one case. A court first decides whether the group can go forward together, based on questions its members have in common. Insurers can face these cases when many customers share the same coverage or billing complaint. That step, called certification, shapes the rest of the case.

What the record shows

As a reviewer, I read this firm as a focused insurance practice with a long record in one state. The founding year of 1979 and the four named attorneys sit on the firm's own pages. So does the concentration on policyholder-side insurance disputes.

The site frames the firm around insurance bad faith, denied health and life claims, disability disputes, annuities and class actions. The firm handles both individual policies and ERISA-governed employer group plans. Gianelli & Morris serves clients throughout southern California from its Los Angeles base.