John Shumadine

jshumadine@mpmlaw.com

John is a director at MP&M.  He joined the firm in 2001, after serving as a law clerk to Chief Justice Daniel E. Wathen of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 1999-2000 and to Judge Kermit V. Lipez of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 2000-01.

Since joining MPM, John’s practice focuses on all legal issues pertaining to land.  Many of those issues pertain to municipal law, including zoning and subdivision regulations.  In the course of his practice, John represents abutters, developers, and towns in connection with all land use issues, from shoreland zoning, to Department of Environmental Protection regulations, to subdivision concerns.  He has represented developers seeking subdivision, site plan, building permit, and other approvals; landowners seeking to challenge a proposed abutting development or rezoning; and towns seeking zoning, subdivision and other land use advice.  John also currently represents the Town of Edgecomb’s Planning Board.  In addition, John also has experience addressing zoning, subdivision, and other similar issues before Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission. 

John’s practice also focuses upon more general land disputes.  John represents landowners involved in boundary and title disputes with their neighbors.  In the course of his practice, John has represented landowners both asserting and defending claims to own property through adverse possession or to have acquired a prescriptive easement through continuous use of a road. 

Finally, John has frequently dealt with disputes about roads.  Those disputes have concerned all levels of rights in roads, from public issues—such as whether a public road has been abandoned, discontinued, or remains public—to private issues—such as determining who has rights in a road, determining what those rights are, or objecting to another’s use of a road.

John is a member of the Maine State, Cumberland County and American Bar Associations and is also the author of Striking a Balance: Statutory Displacement of Established Federal Common Law and the D’Oench, Doctrine in Murphy v. F.D.I.C. and Motorcity of Jacksonville, Inc. v. Southeast Bank, 51 Me. L. Rev. 129 (1999).  Prior to attending law school, John briefly worked as an insurance broker with Lloyds of London and as a teacher of high school and college level English.

John lives with his wife, Catherine, and daughter, Emma, in the Deering Center section of Portland.

 Bar and Court Admissions

Education

    Middlebury College, A.B. 1990
    Old Dominion University, M.A. 1994
    University of Maine School of Law, J.D. summa cum laude 1999

Editor-in-Chief, Maine Law Review, 1998-99; Staff member 1997-98

Practice Areas