Johnston, Robert E.

Roger C. Johnson helped found 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 District of Columbia.

Mr. Johnson is one of four lead counsel in a series of lawsuits nationwide involving the use of railroad, pipelines 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, MCI, Qwest and other major railroad and telecommunications companies.

Mr. Johnson served as 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 head injury while working on the construction of a new building in downtown Washington. Following these two settlements, Mr. Johnson was featured in a front page article in the Style section of The Washington Post entitled "The Man Who Makes Them Pay". Recently, Mr. Johnson resolved the highly publicized case of the infant who was drowned while being baptized in Washington, D.C. Mr. Johnson continues to handle substantial construction accident cases, as well as medical malpractice cases and other negligence matters.

Mr. Johnson served as a Barrister in the first District of Columbia Inn of Court Program established through the Georgetown University Law School in 1983. Mr. Johnson has served as a delegate to the Judicial Conference of the District of Columbia Courts and also as a delegate to the Federal Judicial Conference for the District of Columbia Circuit. For nine years he 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 200 volunteer attorneys seminars on personal injury law as well as mediation techniques. From 1993 to 1996, he was asked to teach the same mediation and settlement techniques of 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.

In addition to his professional responsibilities as an attorney, Mr. Johnson also serves as a Director of United Bank Virginia in Washington, D.C. as well as 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 little league in the Capitol City Little League and girls' basketball in Montgomery County, Maryland. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Carolyn McKenney and their three children.