John E. Shamberg

John Shamberg is co-founder and senior member of the firm, founded in 1949. He is a trial lawyer who has devoted his legal career to civil litigation and has engaged in major cases that have expanded the rights of injured persons and shaped the development of tort law in the state of Kansas.

He is a graduate of Washburn Law School, where he was president of the student body, following which he was law clerk to Honorable Walter A. Huxman, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

Among the notable cases he has handled is the one abolishing governmental immunity in Kansas in proprietary cases, thus allowing injured persons to sue a state agency for the first time in the state's history.

John was one of the lead counsel for victims in the 1981 Hyatt sky walk collapse disaster in which 218 persons were killed or injured. He and Lynn Johnson of the firm successfully handled more than 20 cases involving serious injury to small children who accidentally ingested a drain cleaner product and, through their efforts, forced the manufacturers to reduce the toxic nature of the product and to package their product in a child-proof container.

John has lectured widely before bar associations, on both the state and national level, on trial techniques and emerging concepts of tort law, and has authored several papers on these subjects.

Throughout his career, he has participated in activities of the organized bar, having served for many years on the Board of Governors of the Kansas Bar Association and as a member of the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association. He is a former member of the Board of Governors of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. He served from 1985 to 1993 as a member of the Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission, which selects nominees for appointment by the Governor to the Kansas Court of Appeals and to the Supreme Court of Kansas.

For his service to the legal profession, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Award of the Kansas Bar Association in 1989, the highest honor conferred by that organization, and he was the first recipient of the Arthur G. Hodgson Distinguished Service Award of the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association, conferred in the same year. For his service to his law school, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Law, conferred by Washburn University, and the law school's Distinguished Service Award. He has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America since the first edition was published in 1983.

During World War II, 1942-46, he rose from draftee to major and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for service in the Pacific Theater.