May 15, 2024 – Jim Johnson’s career as a top-flight trial lawyer proves that attorneys can build successful practices outside Madison and Milwaukee.

Johnson grew up in Grinnell, Iowa. His parents worked as administrators at Grinnell College, a small liberal arts school.

In high school, Johnson played point guard for one of the best basketball teams in the state.

In 1965, his sophomore year, Johnson led the Grinnell Tigers to the state semifinals. They lost 73-59 to Keokuk.

“I lived the movie ‘​Hoosiers’, except we didn’t win,” Johnson said.

Before Johnson’s junior year, his father decided to move the family in search of a better job. Johnson, keen to make another tournament run with the Tigers, stayed behind in Grinnell.

After high school, Johnson attended St. Olaf College in Minnesota. It was there that he met his wife, Margaret, a religious studies and English major. She’d go on to pastor a Lutheran church in Eagle River for 18 years.

Army Life

When Johnson graduated college in 1969, he was drafted by the Army.

“I said to myself, ‘The Army is going to use my talents the best way that it can,’ and of course I ended up in the infantry,” Johnson said.

Johnson and his wife spent two years at Fort Polk in Louisiana. Johnson served as the clerk to a mortar training company.

When Margaret landed a job as a financial aid advisor at the University of North Dakota, Johnson decided to attend law school there.​

The decision was driven by the memory of his father’s move to seek a new job.

“I felt I needed to get into a profession that would guarantee that my children wouldn’t be faced with the same choice that I was given when I was a junior in high school,” Johnson said.

After one year at the University of North Dakota, Johnson transferred to the University of Wisconsin Law School. Carl and Mary Gulbrandsen, good friends from St. Olaf College, were living in Madison and lobbied for the Johnsons to join them there.

Stuck Reading Titles

Johnson obtained his law degree in 1974.

He had an offer to clerk with a federal district court judge in Iowa. But the judge required his clerks to become members of the Iowa State Bar Association, so Johnson took a job with Korth, Rodd, Sommer and Mouw S.C., a small firm in Rhinelander.

At first, Johnson spent most of his time reading land titles. The title insurance industry was in its infancy, and banks relied upon attorneys to read titles and give opinions as to the title’s validity.

“I learned all about the land barons in northern Wisconsin, and I learned a lot about timber and timber rights and easements,” Johnson said.

Unsafe at Any Speed

But Johnson yearned to get out of the conference room and into the court room. He got his chance when the Wisconsin Supreme Court took up one of the firm’s cases.

In 1974, Dick Sommer, one of the firm’s partners, sued General Motors on behalf of a client who was injured while riding in a Chevrolet Corvair.

Introduced by Chevrolet in 1960, the Corvair was a compact car with a rear-engine design. The car suffered from a defective rear suspension system that caused the rear end to lift and become uncontrollable during sharp turns.

Lawyer and consumer advocate Ralph Nader shot to fame in 1965 after criticizing the Corvair in Unsafe at Any Speed, a book that detailed the auto industry’s refusal to add seat belts and other safety features to automobiles.

Sommer won at trial, and General Motors appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court (the Wisconsin Court of Appeals didn’t exist until 1978).

Key to the plaintiff’s victory at trial was the admission of evidence that General Motors had made changes to the Corvair’s rear suspension system between 1964 and 1965.

In 1977, in Chart v. General Motors, Corp., 80 Wis. 2d 91, 258 N.W. 2d 680 (1977), the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s admission of the evidence of General Motors’ subsequent remedial measures. The decision came on a 4-3 vote.

“It was the first verdict against General Motors in one of the Corvair cases in the United States,” Johnson said.

“Danny Rottier and I wrote the appellate briefs, and we were the ones who were responsible for the subsequent remedial measures in Wisconsin.”

I was always a champion for the little guy – tilting at windmills. I could never have been a defense lawyer. I just didn’t have the mindset for that.

‘Tilting at Windmills’

After the Chart case, Johnson devoted more and more of his time to trial work.

“I slowly but surely became a full-time plaintiffs’ trial lawyer,” Johnson said.

It was the plights of his clients that attracted Johnson to trial work.

“I was always a champion for the little guy – tilting at windmills,” Johnson said. “I could never have been a defense lawyer. I just didn’t have the mindset for that.”

Johnson relished the challenges presented by trial work.

“I liked learning about a product or an accident,” Johnson said. “I did quite a bit of medical malpractice work. I had the state record for a verdict, twice.”

“I loved learning about medicine, and of course, you get to meet all kinds of really interesting people,” Johnson said. “Engineers, designers, physicians at the top of their fields.”

Professional Service

As he rose to the top of the state’s trial lawyer ranks, Johnson took time out to serve on several professional committees.

He served as the president of the Wisconsin Academy of Trial Lawyers (now called the Wisconsin Association for Justice), chair of the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Litigation Section, and president of the Wisconsin chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates.

“You get to meet wonderful people and you get to meet superior lawyers and establish relationships with them,” Johnson said of his professional service.

One of those people was noted Madison trial lawyer Williams McCusker.

Johnson remembers one Supreme Court case in which McCusker had written an amicus brief for the Wisconsin Academy of Trial Lawyers. During oral argument, McCusker thought that the lawyer hired to argue the plaintiffs’ appeal was failing to make some key points.

Johnson watched in amazement as McCusker began waving from the gallery at Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.

“She recognizes him, he stands up, goes before the bar, gets to the lectern, and argued the case,” Johnson said. “It was the darndest thing I’d ever seen.”

“Those are the kinds of people that I was lucky enough to meet and call colleagues,” Johnson said. “These guys were true advocates. They cared for their clients, they cared for their cause, and they did what they could.”

Word Was Bond

Johnson founded his own firm in Rhinelander in 1984. He retired from full-time practice in 2012, then went on emeritus status several years ago.

The biggest change Johnson noticed in his years of practice was a decline in trustworthiness.

“If you called another trial lawyer and made a verbal agreement, generally speaking the word of the other trial lawyer was good,” Johnson said. “You could trust it; you could rely on it. Slowly but surely over my 50 years, that seemed to change.”

He also noticed a decline in civility between attorneys during the decades he was practicing.

“It would occur in trials, it would occur in depositions, it would occur pretty much everywhere, even in discovery,” Johnson said. “This ‘win-at-all-costs’ attitude that seemed to sneak into the general practice of law was really troubling to me.”

Troubling as the dynamic may be, Johnson said that attorneys have no choice but to confront it.

“When you’re in the arena – when you’re trying to do your best job for your client – you have to deal with it,” Johnson said.

‘Hide-and-Seek Game’

Johnson said he thinks financial factors are largely to blame.

“I think some of my friends and colleagues in the defense bar would say that there’s increased pressure from insurance companies and large corporations to succeed,” Johnson said.

The trend is most worrisome when it shows up in discovery, Johnson said.

“One of the things that really bothered me late in my career was the way in which defense firms would handle discovery issues and the disclosure of documents,” Johnson said. “There were times when I knew certain documents existed and was being told by the other side that ‘We don’t have anything.’”

Johnson said he first noticed the trend when he was working on the Chart case.

“We sent an interrogatory to General Motors asking about tires,” Johnson said. “Their response was ‘We don’t have any information about tires.’ However, if you asked them about ‘round, rotational rubber devices,’ you’d find the information. It’s this hide-and-seek game that got to be more and more problematic. It really made me sad.”

‘I Always Felt Lucky’

Now that he’s retired, Johnson spends a lot of time playing and teaching tennis. He was recently certified as a teaching professional by the U.S. Professional Tennis Association.

Johnson and his wife, who live on a small lake near Rhinelander, also enjoy road biking.

Johnson said he’s grateful for a legal career defined by long-lasting relationships.

“I always felt lucky for the opportunities and thankful for the friendships that I was able to establish over the years,” Johnson said. “It came from being an active contributor to my professional organizations and my state bar.”