John Q. Lewis is a lead trial lawyer and strategist responsible for achieving successful results for clients in high-stakes, complex disputes throughout the world.
John often works on high-profile and newsworthy matters, including cases implicating clients’ most significant business interests or, for some individual clients, involving life-altering or literally life-or-death scenarios. In John’s view, no client matter is too complex to take on or too difficult to solve.
Whatever the legal dispute, John’s litigation philosophy begins first with fully understanding the client’s dilemma. Next, he works alongside the client to outline achievable goals and outcomes that consider both business and legal interests. Then John carefully designs and executes legal strategy to accomplish pre-defined success.
John prepares for the possibility of trial from Day One and follows through to verdict when necessary. He has secured trial wins for public and private company clients against America’s top trial lawyers in jurisdictions as far west as California, as far south as Florida, as far east as Delaware, and as far north as his home state of Ohio. But trial wins are only a fraction of John’s courtroom success for clients, as he frequently has spearheaded innovative legal strategies that have led to early pre-trial exits for clients at the motion to dismiss or summary judgment stages of litigation. In many instances, clients have achieved early or impactful victories in broader industry-wide litigation resulting in savings of millions of dollars in litigation expenses and verdicts when compared to industry competitors represented by other law firms.
While proud of these court wins, John realizes that the price for such outcomes may be cost-prohibitive to some clients who might be better served – and still achieve their business goals – with a favorable settlement or resolution. When called upon to do so, John has delivered uniquely creative resolutions to complex disputes, including large-scale business solutions, protective court-approved class action settlements, and global resolution of all or major parts of multidistrict litigation. On multiple occasions, John successfully defended against challenges to class settlements by objectors claiming the settlements were too favorable to clients, including the U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys general.
Clients engage John on both plaintiff-side and defense-side matters. On the defense side, John often heads up trial teams and national coordinating counsel representations in product liability lawsuits, particularly those involving FDA-regulated pharmaceuticals and medical devices. He co-chairs the Tucker Ellis Class Action Litigation practice and leads defense-side legal teams in sophisticated commercial disputes, including transaction-related shareholder derivative and class actions, consumer class actions including claims under state consumer protection statutes, employment litigation related to non-compete and trade secret matters, professional liability and ethics-related claims, and supply and distribution agreement disputes.
On the plaintiff side, John is responsible for securing tens of millions of dollars for clients and their legal departments in various types of contract and business tort matters, including joint venture, LLC and corporate governance disputes, post-closing disputes involving commercial transactions, pre-closing private equity and sophisticated shareholder class actions, professional negligence claims, trade secret and intellectual property litigation, and vendor and customer supply disputes. John co-founded the Tucker Ellis Commercial Asset Recovery & Protection group and utilizes the firm's longstanding reputation for developing cutting-edge alternative fee arrangements to create win-win scenarios for clients and the firm.
A champion of the justice system, John dedicates a significant amount of time to community and pro bono causes. He has served on several community non-profit boards and represented numerous indigent clients, including tenants in wrongful eviction disputes and wrongfully imprisoned capital defendants in post-conviction proceedings. He has been lead or co-lead counsel in three successful Ohio death penalty matters, including obtaining release and a complete bar of reprosecution through federal court proceedings for an Ohio Death Row inmate that has captured regional and national media attention throughout the past several years.
John serves on the Northern District of Ohio’s Advisory Group, a court-appointed committee of attorneys charged with assisting the court with implementing court-adopted programs and bringing to the court’s attention matters of interest to the bar and the community. In that capacity, he co-chairs the Access to Justice Committee and is also a member of the Civil Rules Committee.
John is Band 3-ranked in Chambers USA 2019, where sources say, "He's a terrific lawyer; he's very insightful and has a lot of appeal with juries."
The proud father of three and grandfather of two, John resides in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood.