Legal Services & Lawyers

Tom was born and raised in Youngstown, OH. He graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, MD in 1969 and from George Washington Law School, Washington, DC in 1973. He was admitted to practice in Maryland by the Court of Appeals on December 27, 1973. Since his admission, he has never been the subject of any complaints or disciplinary proceedings. He has a completely unblemished record with the Bar.

After law school Tom clerked a year for the Hon. E. Mackall Childs in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County, Maryland before spending two years as a staff attorney with the Office of the Public Defender. Since 1975, he has been in private practice.

In the mid 1990s, Tom began to focus his practice on defending child sex abuse cases. Since then, he has devoted his practice exclusively to sex crimes defense. Over the last two decades he has represented hundreds of clients throughout the country. He has been admitted pro hac vice as defense counsel at the trial and/or appellate level on criminal child sexual abuse cases in Massachusetts, Florida, West Virginia, Virginia, Utah, Kansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, the District of Columbia and Georgia.

Tom has also been admitted pro hac vice as Amicus Curiae counsel for the False Memory Syndrome Foundation on briefs submitted to, and accepted by, the Supreme Courts of Texas, Rhode Island, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Illinois (twice), Georgia, Wisconsin, California, New Hampshire (twice) and Massachusetts, as well as two divisions of the California Court of Appeals and the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

At the appellate level, Tom, working in conjunction with the Office of the Public Defender, obtained a reversal of a child sexual abuse conviction at the Kansas Supreme Court. See State v. Plaskett, 27 P.3d 890 (Kan. 2001).

He and Mark Mack also prevailed before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on a child abuse conviction involving issues of competency and taint as matters of first impression. See Com. v. Delbridge, 885 A.2d 27 (Pa.2003).

Tom has a special interest in defending child sex abuse cases in which the complainants are pre-school or very young children. In many instances, incompetent social workers and other zealots who investigate allegations of abuse influence the children to make certain statements by the way they interview the children. This psychological suggestion gives rise to the legal concept of “taint.”

Mr. Portner has been an attorney licensed to practice in Maryland and Washington, D.C. since 1988. He represents clients in matters of personal injury, including motor vehicle accidents, medical malpractice, and workers' compensation. He also spends a considerable amount of time in court representing criminal defendants. After graduating Cum Laude from the University of Baltimore School of Law, and serving as an editor of the Law Review, he initially gained experience clerking for Chief Judge Gilbert of the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. During that year he helped edit an often used text book on Maryland Workers' Compensation Law.

Next, he served as a trial attorney for one of Baltimore's largest law firms. While at the large firm, Mr. Portner obtained numerous large automobile accident arbitration awards, and worked to obtain a million dollar verdict in a personal injury case from a District of Columbia jury. Shortly after working on his first million dollar case, Mr. Portner left to form the firm of Portner & Shure.

He currently supervises the personal injury claims and litigation departments of the law firm. As a result of his vast personal injury litigation experience, Mr. Portner does not want others to view Portner & Shure, P.A. as just a personal injury law firm. Rather, he has formed the firm to be looked upon as trial attorneys who handle personal injury. There is a distinct difference. Portner & Shure, because of this mentality, litigates either automobile accident, workers' compensation, or medical malpractice cases every week of the year. Insurance companies know the firms that don't back down and try cases.

Mr. Portner has tried and won hundreds of cases against some of the top insurance defense attorneys and prosecutors in both State and Federal Courts throughout the region. In each of the last five (5) years he has recovered approximately nine million dollars for his clients, and over fifty million in the last six (6) years in automobile accident, workers' compensation and medical malpractice cases. Recently, he along with attorney, Kevin Ruby, and Sandy Horseman, his top personal injury paralegal, obtained awards of one million dollars in three (3) different cases. It is a fact that most injury attorneys do not obtain a single million dollar award during the course of their careers, let alone three in a short period of time. As a result of these large injury awards, the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, an organization that recognizes the top trial lawyers in America, announced that Jonathan Portner is a certified member. This organization comprises the most prestigious group of trial lawyers in the United States, and fewer than 1% of U.S. lawyers are eligible to become members.

In addition to the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, Mr. Portner is also a member of the American Association for Justice and the Maryland Association for Justice, Maryland State Bar Association (MSBA), National College for DUI Defense, the District of Columbia Bar Association, United States District Court for the District of Maryland, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

His philosophy with insurance companies is to be aggressive, but fair. Above all else he believes in hard work. He spends considerable time working in the Howard County, Maryland community and with his family. His hard work in the local Korean community in fact caused him to pursue a black belt in Tai Kwon Do. His interest and work in sports training and coaching, has led to his son becoming one of the top tennis players in the mid-Atlantic region (boys 16s #2), and currently ranked 65th nationally in boys 16's. His oldest daughter was a four year varsity tennis player and this summer is working at the firm and will be attending Franklin & Marshall in the fall, and his youngest daughter is a Maryland A Cobra travel lacrosse player and Heros Club Lax player.

Mr. Portner dedicates considerable time to all of his endeavors but believes each personal injury or criminal case should be treated as if it's the only case of the firm. He believes he has obtained millions of dollars in recoveries for accident victims each year because of his attention to detail, and insistence that his staff have constant communication with all automobile accident, personal injury, malpractice clients, criminal clients.