John Elliott Leighton

John Elliott Leighton is a board certified trial lawyer and the Managing Partner of Leighton Law, P.A., with offices in Miami and Orlando, Florida. Mr. Leighton litigates and tries significant personal injury and wrongful death cases on behalf of individuals throughout Florida and the United States.

He has been called upon to provide his trial skills to represent clients throughout the country, including New York, Texas, Indiana, Wisconsin, Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois and North Carolina.

He is the author of Litigating Premises Security Cases, a two-volume text on investigating, preparing and trying inadequate security cases and representing crime victims. Recognized as a national expert in the field of negligent security litigation, his trial in Jeffery v. Publix Super Markets, a landmark inadequate security case, was the subject of an entire chapter in the book, Persuasive Jury Communication: Case Studies from Successful Trials.

He is a frequent lecturer at national legal programs and has spoken and taught at seminars, colleges and conventions in over a dozen states.

Many of Mr. Leighton’s cases are high profile or have wide reaching social implications. He is often called upon by local and national media to comment on legal issues, including NBC’s Today show, CNN, Inside Edition, and many other news programs.

As a trial lawyer Mr. Leighton has obtained some of the largest verdicts and settlements in the country, including a $24.3 million wrongful death verdict and $24.1 million medical malpractice birth trauma verdict (considered the highest verdict in Seminole County history, per Orlando Business Journal, 6/20/2005). Leighton has obtained substantial recoveries for victims of negligence throughout Florida (including a $9 million recovery for a woman who suffered brain damage from medical malpractice and $11.25 million for a child who was the victim of medical negligence) and throughout the country (including $4.3 millionfor a medical malpractice death in Chicago, $3 million for a man shot at an ATM in Indiana, $1.136 million for a woman raped in Wisconsin, and $1 million for the family of a woman who died from medical malpractice in Texas). Most recently Mr. Leighton was lead trial counsel in a case which resulted in a $7.35 million verdict for a man who sustained serious injuries as a result of a trucking crash in Central Florida. Prior to that Mr. Leighton won an $8 million award for the parents of a teenage girl who was killed in a vehicle crash, and $5.5 million for the family of a man who was killed due to construction defects in his home.

Having served as Chairman of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America’s Motor Vehicle, Highway and Premises Liability Section, Mr. Leighton currently chairs the association’s Inadequate Security Litigation Group. He is also the Chairman of the Academy of Trial Advocacy, an invitation-only association of some of the nation’s leading catastrophic injury trial lawyers. He has been selected for The Best Lawyers in America continuously since 2008, voted into Florida SuperLawyers every year since 2006, and was honored as one of the Top 100 Florida SuperLawyers from 2009 to the present. He is also a "Top Lawyer" in the South Florida Legal Guide for 13 consecutive years and listed in Florida Trend magazine’s "Florida Legal Elite." He was recently honored by being named by Orlando Style magazine as "Orlando Legal Elite." He has been awarded an A-V preeminent rating by Martindale-Hubbell and a 10.0/10 rating from AVVO.com, the highest ratings awarded. Mr. Leighton received his J.D. and B.A. degrees with honors from the University of Florida. At the University of Florida College of Law he taught first year jurisprudence, was an editor of the Florida Law Review, and competed on the Florida Trial Team.