John has an established track record of successfully representing clients in individual cases and class actions.

He focuses on developing strategies to achieve success at the trial court level and to ensure those victories can be upheld on appeal. John has significant experience briefing and arguing constitutional questions, punitive damages issues, jury instructions, and other complex (and often unsettled) legal issues. He frequently serves as legal issues and appellate preservation counsel at trial and has been a member of approximately 30 trial teams, many of which were multiweek jury trials.  

John has represented manufacturers of a broad range of products, including cigarettes, smokeless tobacco products, prescription pharmaceuticals, and specialty chemicals. He also represents companies in complex commercial litigation and has significant experience responding to bankruptcy filings by adverse parties.

In addition to his domestic litigation practice, John frequently collaborates with national litigation counsel to represent clients in novel litigation internationally. He has recently coordinated the defense of major matters in Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe.

John maintains an active pro bono practice representing individuals and nonprofit organizations. He most recently worked with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project in a successful bid to have a judge vacate the convictions of three men wrongfully convicted of murder that has received national media attention. John previously collaborated with New York City’s Legal Aid Society on class action litigation that resulted in increased rent subsidies for families with children on public assistance who were facing eviction.

John's representations have included:

  • Representing a leading consumer product manufacturer in a product liability suit, removing the case to federal court; coordinating fact and expert discovery, and all dispositive and expert motion practice; securing a motion to exclude the plaintiffs’ medical causation experts and summary judgment

  • Developing legal strategy that resulted in reversal of $157 million compensatory and punitive damages award on appeal

  • Successfully defending against multiple consumer class actions in which the plaintiffs asserted claims based on product advertising and marketing and sought significant damages and injunctive relief

  • Developing legal strategy and drafting a Daubert motion that resulted in the exclusion of the plaintiff’s experts and summary judgment in favor of the defendants on all claims on behalf of an industrial chemical manufacturer

Co-author, Missouri Innocent Seller Statute: Total Recovery Requirement, Missouri Lawyers Media (November 2022)

Co-author, Commentary: Revised Innocent Seller Statute Protects Resident Defendants, Missouri Lawyers Weekly (March 2021)

Co-author, Corporations: Are You Voluntarily Consenting to General Jurisdiction in Pennsylvania?, Westlaw Journal: Corporate Officers & Directors Liability (July 2017)

Co-author, Court Rejects 'Res Ipsa Loquitur Dressed Up as Expert Opinion,' The Legal Intelligencer (February 2017)

Co-author of bi-annual updates to Product Liability by Theodore V.H. Mayer, Robb Patryk and John S. Allee, Law Journal Seminars-Press (2011-2016)

  • University of Michigan Law School, J.D.; Contributing Editor of the Michigan Journal of International Law
  • Cornell University, B.S.

Bars

  • Pennsylvania
  • Florida
  • Massachusetts
  • New Jersey
  • New York
  • U.S. Virgin Islands
  • U.S. District Court: Southern District of New York
  • U.S. District Court: Eastern District of New York
  • U.S. District Court: Southern District of Florida
  • U.S. District Court: Middle District of Florida
  • U.S. District Court: Eastern District of Pennsylvania
  • U.S. District Court: District of New Jersey
  • U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts
  • U.S. District Court, District of the Virgin Islands
  • U.S. Court of Appeals: Second Circuit
  • U.S. Court of Appeals: Third Circuit