About The Firm

After practicing at two of the top plaintiffs’ law firms in California, John Kristensen founded Kristensen Law Group in 2013 to provide clients with intimate care while their lives are placed on hold due to litigation.

In the past three years, he has obtained plaintiffs’ verdicts four times in State and Federal Courts. The cases were a business dispute ($5.5M), an assault ($8.9M), wrongful termination based on a disability (sickle cell anemia), and for two employees for wage theft ($400K).

Good Morning America, USA Today, AP, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, KNBC and the Daily Journal have all reported on Mr. Kristensen’s relentless effort to hold manufacturers accountable. The Daily Journal selected John as one of five associates to watch in the state of California in its annual 20 under 40 edition. He was the sole plaintiffs’ attorney to receive the accolade. He has also been named to Super Lawyers’ Rising Stars for Southern California for the last three years.

John’s experience runs the gamut for not just plaintiffs’ counsel, but litigation in general. John has tried employment and wrongful death trials and obtained numerous several hundred thousand dollar settlements for his clients. John has litigated against NBC, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Spearmint Rhino, Ford Motor Company, Toyota Motor Company, General Motors, and numerous other large corporations. John spent two years at the Class Action firm, Strange & Carpenter, where he was instrumental in preparing one of the bellwether sudden acceleration cases that resolved in December 2012. He was the youngest attorney appointed to the plaintiffs’ steering committees in the California Toyota Sudden Acceleration cases. Mr. Kristensen spent a number of years in the Bay Area practicing at O’Reilly || Collins, representing plaintiffs in catastrophic cases with an emphasis on aviation and automobile products liability. In May 2010, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”) accepted Mr. Kristensen’s request to open a timeliness query into the 2005 Toyota steering relay rod recall. Mr. Kristensen uncovered that Toyota had received nearly 40 complaints of the rods’ failing in the United States by October 2004 when Toyota issued the recall for the parts in pickups and 4Runners in Japan, but not the United States. Toyota told NHTSA at the time they had no similar information in the United States, and that is why Toyota delayed the recall for nearly a year in America. Toyota paid the maximum fine in December 2010 of over $16,000,000.00 as a result of Mr. Kristensen’s investigation. Mr. Kristensen later obtained a landmark Order compelling Toyota Motor Corporation to produce five (5) of their executives from Japan to travel to California for their deposition.

Mr. Kristensen was born in Massachusetts and was raised in North Andover. Mr. Kristensen received his undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of Oregon. Upon graduation, Mr. Kristensen moved to Los Angeles to work for the California Democratic Party in the 1998 election. In 1999, John received a scholarship to attend Washington & Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia.

He is licensed to practice in California and Massachusetts. Mr. Kristensen resides in Santa Barbara, California with his wife and three children.