With a legal career spanning nearly 40 years, John Shely focuses his practice on managed care trials, including provider litigation, ERISA benefits and fiduciary litigation, and bad faith insurance practices litigation. Additionally, he has extensive experience handling various types of commercial disputes for managed care companies, as well as companies in other industries. Mr. Shely’s courtroom experience has made him a go-to attorney those clients who have concluded their case will need to be tried. In some instances, he is hired late in the process when a case is transferred from another firm just before trial.
Mr. Sheley has served as first chair in jury and bench trials around the country. For instance, he was lead trial counsel for a national drug store chain in a case where the Plaintiffs sought hundreds of millions of dollars in damages relating to alleged overpayments for prescriptions. The case was tried before a 12-person jury in Delaware state court in May 2023. After two weeks of evidence, and after closing arguments in the third week of the trial, the case was submitted to the jury, which in less than three hours of deliberation returned a take-nothing verdict in favor of Mr. Shely’s client.
Since 2015, Mr. Shely has tried twenty-three cases in a first-chair capacity, including jury verdicts in four states in both state and federal court, as well as many arbitrations. He has argued before the Texas Supreme Court, as well as the Fifth and Tenth Circuit courts of appeals. Mr. Shely has gained a reputation as an “everywhere” lawyer, meaning that he can try cases in many different jurisdictions and still comfortably relate to juries.
Recently, much of Mr. Shely’s practice has involved representing managed care companies in disputes with providers. These disputes include arbitrations or lawsuits with network providers, putative class actions by physicians, countering chargemaster abuse by out-of-network providers, and defending claims for millions of dollars in alleged prompt pay penalties. A significant area of Mr. Shely’s practice has included providers alleged to have engaged in large scale schemes involving improper or fraudulent billing practices. Notable among these is a case in which the client obtained a $41 million judgment against an out-of-network hospital for billing fraud involving fee forgiveness and kickbacks to physician-owners.
Mr. Shely has also handled many cases relating to pension claims and breach of fiduciary duty claims under ERISA. John has also tried numerous ERISA benefits suits in federal court including injunction cases relating to COBRA issues and deselection of providers from managed care networks. Many cases Mr. Shely has taken on have been resolved in favor of clients, prior to trial, as a result of the granting of pretrial motions.
Updated Oct 2024
