A counsel in the Litigation Department, Johan has substantial experience litigating a wide variety of complex civil cases in federal and state courts up to and including trial, as well as representing clients in arbitration and mediation. Johan has represented clients in matters involving allegations of securities fraud, challenges to mergers — including alleged breaches of fiduciary duties in connection with those mergers — environmental damage, personal injury, employment discrimination, price fixing and breaches of contract. Johan also has experience representing clients in bankruptcy proceedings.
Johan’s representative matters include:
- Solvay Specialty Polymers USA LLC in various litigations in state and federal court involving allegations of natural resource damages and personal injury relating to PFAS chemicals;
- The Special Committee of the Board of Directors of QAD Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based enterprise software solutions, in defeating a stockholder’s preliminary injunction motion brought in the Delaware Court of Chancery seeking to block a shareholder vote on QAD’s $2 billion merger with private equity firm Thoma Bravo, allowing the transaction to proceed to a shareholder vote and the sale to be completed;
- Oak Pacific Investments and Joseph Chen in connection with a derivative litigation filed in New York state court challenging a spin-off transaction;
- The Bank of New York Mellon in two class actions related to foreign exchange pricing for American Depositary Receipts;
- ExxonMobil in an eight-month bench trial in a case where the State of New Jersey sought $9 billion in natural resource damages, resulting in a settlement of $225 million that was reached while awaiting verdict.
Johan also maintains an active pro bono practice. He has represented clients in asylum applications, housing actions, appeals of criminal convictions and habeas petitions — one appeal resulting in the exoneration of a wrongfully convicted individual after 16 years in prison —challenges to civil immigration detention, challenges to unconstitutional arrests and claims involving discriminatory hiring practices. Johan has also represented, as co-counsel with the ACLU, several parents and children who were separated from each other at the Southern border during the government's now-rescinded zero tolerance immigration policy in their claims against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Through his pro bono practice, Johan has also assisted in drafting amicus briefs and petitions for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts, including an amicus brief in support of affirmative action in United States v. Fisher, and in opposition to the addition of a citizenship question on the decennial census in Department of Commerce v. New York.
Johan currently serves on the board of the Filipino American Lawyers Association of New York, for which he was previously president, vice president and treasurer, and has also served as a co-chair of the Minorities in the Profession Committee of the New York City Bar Association. While at Columbia Law School, he served as a managing director for the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.
