John practices in the firm's Commercial Litigation Department and has over two decades of experience handling a wide variety of complex litigation. He defends companies in securities, corporate governance, class action, antitrust, product liability, mass tort, and other business litigation. John regularly represents global companies in the life sciences, banking, consumer products, venture capital, fund management, and real estate industries.
In the area of financial litigation, John defends clients in state and federal courts in disputes involving contested takeovers, securities class actions, RICO claims, fraud claims, and real estate financing disputes. In this area, John represents clients who have been victims of cyberattacks. He currently serves as lead counsel to a foreign central bank in the Commercial Division of the New York Supreme Court, seeking the recovery of tens of millions of U.S. dollars in foreign reserves that were stolen through a cyberattack as part of one of the largest thefts in New York banking history. John also has extensive experience in arbitration and international arbitration.
John is also a highly experienced class action litigator, having defended clients against consumer privacy, securities, antitrust, data privacy, breach of contract, and other class actions. His experience extends to multidistrict class action litigations and consolidated proceedings. He has litigated class actions involving governmental services in the pro bono sphere, and he is lead counsel to the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the pending consolidated class action arising out of the “Bridgegate” scandal.
John also has years of experience in high stakes mass tort and product liability actions, litigating bet-the-company actions in state courts and in federal multidistrict litigation. John has served on trial defense teams in some of the largest and most challenging product liability and mass tort litigation, defending against cases involving significant personal injury and disease states and claims of failure to warn, manufacturing and design defect, and breach of warranty.
In the real estate industry, John represents lenders, REITs, and financial trusts in high-stakes litigation and advisory work regarding workouts and distressed assets, including disputes between servicers and co-lenders, and contract matters relating to distressed borrowers. John develops practical tactics for both negotiations and litigation relating to all types of distressed real estate disputes.
A well-rounded commercial litigator, John has deep experience managing attorneys conducting case-specific discovery, defending witnesses, handling evidentiary and coordination hearings, negotiating with opponents, and deposing and defending expert witnesses. He has litigated constitutional and preemption issues, dealt with regulatory agencies and their regulations, and represented clients in appellate proceedings before state and federal appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
Before joining Cozen O’Connor, John was a partner at Dechert LLP, and he started his career at Sullivan & Cromwell. For John's considerable success, he has been recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a “future star,” an “innovative lawyer” by the Financial Times, and as a New York Super Lawyer in Business Litigation.
John is a frequent author and speaker at legal conferences, and he is often asked to comment on current litigation in the legal media.
John earned his law degree from Rutgers University School of Law-Newark, where he was awarded the Order of the Coif and was a two-time Saul Tischler Scholar. He received his bachelor's degree from Rutgers University, New Brunswick.