Stuart Johnson heads Cohen Johnson Bartlett LLP’s commercial real estate and partnership practice and advises clients in a wide variety of transactions and disputes with a particular focus on real estate matters. Stuart largely works with a group of family office clients whose commercial real estate portfolios total over $1 billion in assets. Stuart has also represented a range of clients from large, public corporations to privately held small and mid-cap companies.

Stuart’s real estate work includes the representation of owners and investors in connection with the acquisition, sale, development, and financing multi-family developments, retail centers, office buildings, and industrial space. Stuart has particular experience in joint venture and partnership agreements, including the setup and re-structuring of debt and equity investments. Stuart has also acted as borrower’s counsel on institutional commercial loan transactions.

In addition, Stuart has extensive experience litigating real estate related claims, including actions by lenders and borrowers as well as complex disputes between fractional owners such as tenants in common and members of limited liability companies and partnerships. His commercial litigation experience has also involved prosecuting and defending a wide spectrum of claims relating to fraud and other business torts in state and federal courts, as well as arbitrations. Stuart has successfully litigated over a dozen cases to a final decision in private arbitrations, jury trials, and bench trials.

Stuart obtained his J.D. from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and his B.A. in Economics from UCLA. He was a full-time extern law clerk for Judge Harry Pregerson of the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, and for Superior Court Judge Richard C. Neal. From 1999 to 2009 Stuart was with the Los Angeles office of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, one of the nation’s oldest Wall Street-based law firms. Stuart left to become a partner at Carico Johnson Toomey LLP from 2009 until its winddown in 2018 and was a partner at Kesselman Brantly Stockinger LLP from 2018 to 2023 when he left to become a founding partner at Cohen Johnson Bartlett LLP.

Stuart has several interests and hobbies outside of his passion for practicing law. For over 20 years Stuart has been an active volunteer at Journey of Faith, a Manhattan Beach church with over 1,000 weekly attendees, where he has led a weekly Bible study for over 15 years and currently serves on the church’s governing Elder Board. Stuart enjoys studying Pre-Reconstruction U.S. History, tries to race cars on a local Southern California track as often as he can, is an American classic car aficionado, has been an avid downhill skier for over 40 years, and is a budding rancher at his family’s hunting ranch in the Texas Hill Country. Stuart also enjoys triathlons and has completed (3) ironman distance races, (8) half-ironman distance races, and over a dozen olympic distance races, including a few podium finishes over the past 20 years. Stuart and his wife Julie started dating over 30 years ago while at UCLA, have been married almost 25 years, and have two children who attended school in the Manhattan Beach School District, where Julie serves on the PTA Board.