John’s practice focuses on constitutional and regulatory litigation. A former U.S. Supreme Court clerk and Solicitor General of Alabama, John is a member of Maynard Cooper's General Litigation group and serves as Chair of the Firm’s Appellate Practice group.
John represents clients in wide array of cases throughout the country. He is lead counsel in a pending California Supreme Court case concerning the retroactivity of an California statute that impacts the entire life-insurance industry. In 2020, John helped one client obtain reversal of an $11.4 million jury verdict for breach of contract in the Alabama Supreme Court, which rendered judgment in the client’s favor on appeal. He helped another client obtain vacatur, in the Eleventh Circuit, of a trial court’s decision not to compel arbitration of a $66.5 million bad-faith insurance claim. He helped local-government clients obtain dismissal, at both the trial-court and appellate levels, of constitutional challenges to the taxes that funded those clients’ operations. John routinely represents alcohol-industry clients in cases raising constitutional challenges to the three-tier system of state alcohol regulation, including in the Supreme Court.
As state Solicitor General from 2011 to 2014, John argued two merits cases at the United States Supreme Court. He continues to represent the State of Alabama in interstate water-rights cases in the District of Columbia and the Northern District of Georgia.
Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business distinguishes John as a Band 1 leading attorney in the area of Appellate Litigation. Best Lawyers® named him the region's 2017 and 2021 "Lawyer of the Year" for Appellate Practice.