John W. Ursu

John’s approach drives results. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, John led a multi-office team of commercial, intellectual property and white collar attorneys that stopped an attempted $14.25 billion fraud on the State of Indiana in connection with the procurement of 3M’s N95 respirators. He defended Dominion Voting Systems in cases filed in Minnesota arising from the 2020 national election and has argued for the constitutionality of COVID vaccine mandates for the City of Northfield, Minnesota. Previously, John represented a large corporate plaintiff in multidistrict litigation where, as a court-appointed member of the plaintiff’s executive committee, he helped secure a $217 million judgment at trial and, ultimately, a $1.5 billion settlement on behalf of U.S. corn farmers. Cases John has led have been featured in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

According to Benchmark Litigation, John is an “extremely eloquent” oral and written advocate who has “made a name for himself managing complex business disputes.” As an oral advocate, he argued and won a series of industry-defining cases on the preemptive scope of the U.S. Grain Standards Act on behalf of a joint-defense group composed of the largest grain handlers and exporters in the world. Likewise, he argued and won remand for 10,000 cases removed under the federal common law of foreign relations on behalf of a joint-prosecution group in multidistrict litigation. John has argued against a U.S. Supreme Court clerk seven times — in venues from Louisiana to Kansas City — and has won each time.

John graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was managing editor of the Michigan Law Review and the Campbell Moot Court champion. John is on the adjunct faculty at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he teaches law students how to take testimony. He is a co-editor and co-author of Minnesota Contract Litigation, published by LexisNexis, and writes on topics from trial practice to Shakespeare.

Commercial, Intellectual Property & Constitutional Litigation

John leads cases in the following areas:

• Trade secret, trademark and copyright
• Mass tort
• Breach of fiduciary duty
• Fraud
• Breach of contract
• Sale of goods under the Uniform Commercial Code
• Breach of warranty
• Constitutional law and First Amendment
• Administrative law