John E. Suthers

A native of North Augusta, South Carolina, John E. Suthers was born in 1957. He is the Founder of Suthers & Harper, a law firm located in Savannah, Georgia, that litigates and takes to trial substantial, civil damage lawsuits. Mr. Suthers graduated with honors from the University of South Carolina and earned his law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1983. He is a licensed attorney in Georgia and South Carolina. Mr. Suthers has been a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers since 2019.

Over his 40 year career, Mr. Suthers has successfully handled a variety of complex personal injury and wrongful death cases, including cases resulting from abuse and neglect in nursing homes, medical malpractice, defective products, and motor vehicle accidents. Additionally, Mr. Suthers law firm was retained by the City of Savannah, Georgia, to represent the City in the pending, national litigation against the manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioids. Mr. Suthers has served as lead trial counsel in cases filed throughout the States of Georgia and South Carolina. Additionally, he has been associated by other law firms and assisted other attorneys in cases in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

John Suthers is a pioneer in the field of nursing home litigation. Beginning in the 1990s, he was among the first lawyers in the U.S. to sue a nursing home for abusing and neglecting a resident, take the case all the way to trial, and obtain a successful jury verdict. Mr. Suthers has tried and settled numerous cases against nursing homes and assisted living facilities, involving pressure sores, fall-related injuries, malnutrition and dehydration. In the medical malpractice field, he has tried and settled cases against doctors and hospitals, involving failures to timely and correctly diagnose diseases, botched surgeries, birth injuries, medication errors, and medical equipment failures. In the field of defective products, he has tried and resolved successfully numerous cases, involving dangerous exposures to asbestos and other harmful substances, defective medical, surgical, and safety products, and harmful drugs. Some of the complex motor vehicle cases he has tried and resolved successfully included collisions involving tractor-trailers, vehicle rollovers, and railroad crossing cases. Often, these cases involved representing and counseling clients who had suffered permanent and catastrophic injuries that required lifetime medical care, and presenting to juries the economic and non-economic losses associated with a permanent injury or wrongful death.

Mr. Suthers was named one of the Top 100 attorneys in the State of Georgia for 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2018, 2015, 2014 and 2008 by Law & Politics, the publisher of Georgia Super Lawyers. Law & Politics adheres to a rigorous, multi-step evaluation process involving nominations, peer evaluations and professional achievement throughout the State of Georgia.

John Suthers was named Savannahs Lawyer of the Year for 2014 and 2011 in the field of Personal Injury Litigation by Best Lawyers, one of the oldest and most respected peer-review publications in the legal profession. Best Lawyers compiles its list of outstanding attorneys by conducting exhaustive peer-reviewed surveys in which thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers. Only a single lawyer in each practice area in each community was honored as the Lawyer of the Year. As reported in Best Lawyers, The selected lawyers have earned a high level of respect among other leading lawyers in the same communities in the same practice areas for their abilities, their professionalism, and their integrity.

Mr. Suthers is a member of the American Bar Association, State Bar of Georgia, South Carolina Bar, Savannah Bar Association, American Association for Justice, Georgia Trial Lawyers Association, South Carolina Association for Justice, and Savannah Trial Lawyers Association. He is also a member of the Melvin M. Belli Society, another invitation-only group of trial lawyers across the U.S., who have been selected by their peers and whose purpose is to promote the international exchange of ideas among lawyers through meetings and education.

Mr. Suthers has achieved an AV rating by Martindale-Hubbell, the highly regarded legal publication. Martindale-Hubbell conducted an extensive review of the community’s legal professionals and determined that Mr. Suthers’ skill and ability as an attorney meets the highest of standards and he possesses unquestioned professional ethics.