Shapiro, Lifschitz & Schram

John represents clients on both private and public construction projects including Major League Baseball and National Football League stadiums, power plants, schools, hospitals and other types of projects both in the United States and internationally. His broad range of work in complex commercial matters includes commercial real estate, purchase agreements, employment issues, and environmental remediation and reporting. John has tackled business torts with allegations of conspiracy, defamation, fraud, negligent misrepresentation and intentional interference within contractual and business relationships.

It’s that passion that first drew John to the law and it is that passion that drives John every day to find a way to win for his clients. John relishes becoming personally invested with his clients’ needs to determine what the issues are, and together, as a team, how to best address them. Teamwork. Comradery. A common purpose. Winning. These concepts define John’s passion for his work and most importantly, for his clients.

• John was a senior member of the SLS trial team that represented the owner of a one-of-a-kind activated-carbon manufacturing facility and related power plant in a $100 million dispute with an internationally recognized EPC contractor. The disputes involved highly complex issues of defective work, defective equipment, construction failures, delays and construction claims. When serious problems with the design and construction of the plant began to appear during start-up and commissioning, the SLS trial team guided the client through the end of the project and disputes procedures. John worked closely with the technical experts, including onsite investigation inside a boiler and main exhaust duct, to forensically analyze the cause of the failures and later to develop persuasive mediation presentations. John played a key role in achieving a highly successful negotiated settlement at the end of the mediation.
• John worked tenaciously for eight years on a case involving the construction of a Major League Baseball stadium. The case involved multiple parties and various legal issues including construction and delay, contract claims recast as tort claims, statute of limitations, privilege communications with a surety and avoidance of contractual limitation of liability provisions.  In the end, John obtained a complete defense verdict after a six-week bench trial on more than $20 million of claims against a national construction-management firm.
• John represented a general contractor on an industrial project at the US Capitol Power Plant and associated utility tunnels.  A subcontractor sued the general contractor on a substantial claim asserting changes, delays and inefficiencies in the work.  John led a team of experts in the analysis of the bid estimates and costs of construction and prepared detailed mediation presentations that identified fundamental flaws in the asserted claims.
• John represented a government contractor working for the U.S. Corps of Engineers on an airport runway project at a U.S. Air Force Base in Afghanistan. The contractor retained a foreign subcontractor who made mistakes, fell behind schedule and didn’t fulfill its contractual obligations. The American government contractor terminated the subcontractor for default and hired another subcontractor to finish the project. The subcontractor sued in the International Court of Arbitration for more than $20 million. After two weeks of hearings in Washington, DC, John obtained a complete defense verdict.
• John represented a private school in a suit against a general contractor who was building an addition at the school. Years later, when a dispute arose on another private school project, the general contractor turned to John to handle it. Design and permitting issues arose at the outset of the project that drastically increased the time and money needed to construct the project. The contractor continued working – despite the costly changes – and when the school refused to pay for the project’s additional costs or negotiate those costs in good faith, the contractor sued for $4.5 million. John obtained a lien and then maneuvered the dispute into a mediation, which resulted in a favorable settlement.