Boca Raton Personal Injury Lawyers Blog | Ellis, Ged & Bodden P.A.

Published: December 22, 2008
Senior Status

More than 50 years out of law school, it would hardly be surprising if Boston attorney J. Albert Johnson were slowing his pace and pulling back from the high-profile cases that catapulted him to fame as a go-to defense attorney.

But there he was up in Portland, Maine, last month as his client, Robert LaPointe of Medway, was being sentenced to three years in a county jail on an OUI charge stemming from a fatal boating accident. Johnson's defense of LaPointe had led to a deadlocked jury and a mistrial on more serious charges of manslaughter against his client, whose speedboat had struck and killed two people out for a cruise along Harrison, Maine's Long Lake in August 2007.

Widely covered by the Portland Press Herald and other Maine media, the LaPointe case once again thrust Johnson into the limelight, from whose glare he has never shrink.

Whether it was former CIA operative James McCord, implicated in the Watergate scandal that took down the presidency of Richard Nixon, or newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst facing bank robbery charges or New Hampshire's Pamela Smart, charged with conspiring to kill her husband, or onetime colleague and longtime friend F. Lee Bailey hit with an OUI charge, Johnson has been their vigorous defender.

"I've tried cases in 33 states," he says, not so shyly, adding that those trials have come his way "by reputation, by referrals from other lawyers and a lot of it by publicity."

He came to his career by a somewhat unconventional route. Born and brought up in Waltham and educated at Northeastern University, a young Johnson was hired as an inspector for the Registry of Motor Vehicles and was assigned to investigate fatal accidents. Eight years later, after graduating from Boston College Law School and passing the bar in 1956, he became counsel to the RMV and served in the role for 39 years.

Four years later, a law student by the name of F. Lee Bailey found his way to Johnson's Boston firm, and thus began a long friendship and partnership, the former continuing to this day, Johnson reports.

That firm - known now as the Law Offices of J. Albert Johnson, with attorneys George Hassett and Michael F. Hanley as principals along with him - is very much a general practice and very much of another time, advertising itself online as offering a full range of legal services 24 hours a day - "nights, weekends and holidays."

Johnson sees that accessibility as distinguishing him from his younger counterparts at the bar.

"If there is any difference, it is my availability," he says of his round-the-clock schedule. "I don't know of other lawyers who promise that. I get calls all the time ... an average of 56 calls a day."

‘I shall never retire'

If there is one area of specialization within Johnson's general practice, it would be motor vehicle homicide cases and, as in the Maine boating accident case, motor vessel homicides. The two differ, he explains, in that U.S. Coast Guard rules govern the nation's waterways and boating accidents summon the application of the federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Such rules do not apply in motor vehicle accident cases, Johnson notes.

Other than focusing on the motor vehicle/vessel homicide cases, Johnson stands ready to represent all manner of clients. He says the only two categories of cases he refuses to accept are those involving organized crime or drugs. "I think of myself as a cop," he says.

Indeed, his résumé indicates that he has served as legal officer and court prosecutor for the Hingham Police Department and is a life member of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association.

Although his law office has been at Charles River Park since 1964, Johnson is quite the peripatetic person these days. He maintains a residence in Centerville on Cape Cod and says he does "a great deal of trial work" in Florida, where he is of counsel to the firm of Ellis, Ged & Bodden in Boca Raton.

And that leads a reporter to ask if retirement is in Johnson's future.

"I shall never retire," he declares. "I love the practice of law; I love trying cases; I love being in the courtroom. And I will continue to do it as long as possible."