Jo Ann Shotwell Kaplan Of Counsel

Jo Ann Shotwell Kaplan is an experienced and successful complex civil litigator, having practiced for more than 30 years before state and federal trial and appellate courts, administrative agencies, and arbitral tribunals.  Her experience spans the full range of business litigation, including commercial, corporate transactional, employment, environmental and toxic tort, insurance, real estate, construction, intellectual property, securities, government contract and qui tam whistleblower, product liability and personal injury, bankruptcy, and consumer protection claims, as well as the defense of government investigations and conduct of internal corporate investigations. Jo Ann’s expertise also includes environmental and land use compliance, regulatory, transactional, and permitting work, mediation and arbitration, and the assessment and management of litigation risks and costs.

Immediately before joining Prince Lobel, Jo Ann served as general counsel of the New England Legal Foundation, where she handled and supervised appellate amicus litigation on constitutional and other cutting-edge legal issues of concern to New England businesses and property owners before the U.S. Supreme Court, the 1^st and 2^nd Circuit Courts of Appeal, and the state appellate courts throughout New England. Her practice there involved a broad range of subject matter, including employment law, consumer protection litigation, arbitration, class actions, contract rights, securities regulation, the protection of trade secrets and confidential business information, preemption, First Amendment protections for businesses, regulatory and eminent domain takings, landlord-tenant law, and state property and sales taxation.

While at the New England Legal Foundation, Jo Ann was responsible for its advocacy in over 35 appeals, which resulted in landmark decisions that included:

• A U.S. Supreme Court decision that the Federal Arbitration Act is not the exclusive means for judicial review of arbitral decisions in federal court
• A First Circuit decision that class-action waivers in employers’ arbitration policies for claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act are not per se unconscionable
• A decision of the Rhode Island Supreme Court in lead paint litigation rejecting a new cause of action for product liability
• Decisions of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court clarifying the standards for certification of consumer classes containing nonresidents, rejecting the retroactive application of new concepts of unfairness to the time of business conduct in connection with consumer complaints, preserving the exclusivity of workers’ compensation remedies, and recognizing the joint defense privilege

Prior to her tenure with the New England Legal Foundation, Jo Ann practiced in the environmental and energy field for 17 years, first as a Massachusetts assistant attorney general and then in private practice, most recently as a partner at Choate, Hall & Stewart in Boston. Her private clients came from the life sciences, manufacturing, real estate, financial, construction, engineering, energy, health care and government sectors. Jo Ann then served for nearly nine years as chief counsel, litigation, for Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., a multinational public company and life sciences leader, where she oversaw hundreds of cases and disputes throughout the United States and abroad. In addition to handling and managing Thermo’s litigation, Jo Ann provided counseling on employment, insurance, risk management, and environmental, health and safety matters, and gained a broad familiarity with the legal and regulatory issues, both domestic and foreign, of major multinational corporations.

In the course of her litigation and environmental practices, Jo Ann has:

• Developed and implemented highly effective systems and practices for controlling litigation risks and costs, saving one company more than $600,000 in a single two-year period with just one of these practices
• Turned a suit challenging a $34 million transaction into a $40 million deal for the company
• Brokered a mutual walk-away from competing patent and antitrust claims in related domestic and foreign lawsuits
• Settled a $27 million contract and patent dispute for $1 million and a highly favorable license
• Successfully tried toxic tort insurance coverage and environmental enforcement actions and a $7 million Lanham Act false advertising case
• Settled several shareholder class actions for no payment at all
• Settled five cases valued at over $12 million for just over $1 million
• Obtained a $5 million recovery from former employees
• Obtained an appellate decision affirming an arbitration decision awarding nothing to the opposing party on a $5 million contract claim
• Negotiated as common counsel an early settlement of a complex private Superfund action on behalf of about 40 defendants, with settlement payments by each equaling less than the transaction costs of continued litigation alone
• Conceived and directed an inter-agency reorganization of the state's environmental enforcement programs
• Secured an unprecedented covenant not to sue from state environmental regulators and a decision by state prosecutors not to prosecute an alleged environmental crime due to evidence of governmental acquiescence  

Jo Ann has also never had a client lose a deal due to environmental considerations.

Recent Publications:

“Pharm Cases an Rx for Determining Protection,” New England In-House, November 2008

“Nationwide Class Actions in Massachusetts Courts,” Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, August 11, 2008

“Rhode Island Rejects Expanded Products Liability,” GC New England, Second Quarter 2008

“Numerous Pending Cases Could Significantly Impact New England Companies,” New England In-House, March 2008

“Ramifications of Bioterrorism-lab Ruling Could Extend 'Well Beyond' BU Project,” Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, February 4, 2008

“Is Arbitration All That It’s Cracked Up To Be?”, New England In-House, July 2007

Bar Admissions

• United States Supreme Court
• First Circuit and D.C. Circuit Courts of Appeals
• United States District Court, District of Massachusetts
• Massachusetts

Education

• University of Virginia School of Law, J.D., 1977; Editor, Virginia Law Review
• Jackson College of Tufts University, B.A., 1974; summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa

Memberships

• Boston Bar Association - Litigation and Environmental Law Sections
• Women’s Bar Association - Amicus and Employment Issues Committees
• Massachusetts Advisory Council of the New England Legal Foundation
• Licensed Site Professional Association (LSPA)
• New England Women in Energy and the Environment (NEWIEE)
• NAIOP: The Commercial Real Estate Development Association - Environmental and Chapter 21E Committees and Amicus Subcommittee of the Massachusetts chapter