Roger C. Johnson

2001 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Suite 450
Washington, D.C. 20006
(202) 659-5500

Roger C. Johnson founded the law firm of Koonz, McKenney, Johnson, DePaolis & Lightfoot in September of 1979.  He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the National Law Center of the George Washington University, receiving his Juris Doctor degree in 1977.  During 1977 and 1978, he was law clerk to the Honorable George H. Revercomb, who at that time served as a trial judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

In his last 2 trials, Mr. Johnson obtained verdicts totaling nearly 15 million dollars on behalf of his clients.  He handles serious injury cases, as well as other types of litigation.

Mr. Johnson was trial counsel in Redd v. Product Development Corporation, in which he obtained the largest settlement in the District of Columbia history for his client, Ethel Jane Redd, who was dragged by a rampaging truck at 16th and K Streets in Washington, D.C. One year later, he obtained the second largest District of Columbia settlement in the case of Shover v. Stella Steel.  This settlement was obtained on behalf of a young construction worker who sustained a severe brain injury while working on the construction of a new building in downtown Washington.  Following these two settlements, Mr. Johnson was featured on a front page article in the Style section of The Washington Post entitled “The Man Who Makes Them Pay.”

In March of 2006, Mr. Johnson was inducted into the International Society of Barristers.  In December 2007, he was again recognized by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the areas “top 1%” of personal injury lawyers.  He was also named one of “American’s Best Lawyers” for 2007.

Mr. Johnson is frequently asked to mediate serious medical malpractice cases and has served as an instructor to the attorney neutral evaluators and mediators who serve in the Multi-Door Dispute Resolution Division of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.  Through this program, Mr. Johnson has taught over 300 volunteer attorneys in seminars on personal injury law as well as mediation techniques.  He has taught the same mediation and settlement techniques to the judges of the Civil Division of the Superior Court.  Mr. Johnson has also served as a member of the Board of Governors of the District of Columbia Trial Lawyers Association.

Mr. Johnson continues to serve as one of four lead counsel in a series of lawsuits nationwide involving the use of railroad, pipeline and utility right-of-ways for the placement of fiber-optic cable.  The plaintiffs in these cases are farmers and other landowners who have rights to the subsurface on virtually every railroad right-of-way.   The defendants include AT&T, Sprint, WorldCom, Qwest and other major railroad and telecommunications companies.

In addition to his professional responsibilities as an attorney, Mr. Johnson is currently a Director of United Bank of Virginia, a regional bank with more than 112 full services offices in the Mid-Atlantic Area.  He is the immediate past Chairman of the Foundation of Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Church in Northwest Washington, the National Methodist Church.  He has been active in the Big Brothers of Washington, D.C. and in 1983 was named Big Brother of the Year by that organization.  He has coached baseball in the Capitol City Little League and girls’ basketball in Montgomery County, Maryland.  He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Carolyn McKenney.  They have three children.