Roger C. Johnson (Retired)FOUNDING ATTORNEY
“The Man Who Makes Them Pay.” – Washington Post
Roger C. Johnson founded the law firm of Koonz McKenney Johnson & DePaolis LLP in September of 1979 and is now retired. 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 three trials, Mr. Johnson obtained verdicts or post-trial settlements totaling nearly $16 million on behalf of his clients. He handled serious injury cases.
Mr. Johnson was trial counsel in Redd v. Product Development Corporation, in which he obtained the largest settlement in the District of Columbia history at the time for his client, truck accident victim 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 at the time 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 November 2016, Mr. Johnson settled a pedestrian leg crush case for over $9.3 million.
He has obtained million dollar verdicts and settlements for clients in automobile accidents, including pedestrian injuries, medical malpractice cases, construction accident cases, and slip and fall cases, along with many other types of injury claims.
In 2006, Mr. Johnson was inducted into the International Society of Barristers. In December of 2015, he was again recognized by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the areas top 1% of personal injury lawyers. He was also named one of America’s Best Lawyers for 2007-2017.
Mr. Johnson was frequently asked to mediate serious medical malpractice cases and 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 taught hundreds of volunteer attorneys in seminars on personal injury law as well as mediation techniques. He taught the same mediation and settlement techniques to the judges of the Civil Division of the Superior Court. Mr. Johnson 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 was also a director of the United Bank of Virginia, a regional bank with more than 129 full services offices in the Mid-Atlantic Area. He was also active in the Big Brothers of Washington, D.C. and was a past Big Brother of the Year. 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.
Mr. Johnson proudly retired from the firm he founded after a very long and successful career.
