Stuart Z. Grossman

Co-Founder of the Law Firm Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen

By Mike Clary

September 2019

After graduating from Coral Gables High School, Stuart Grossman thought he might become an English teacher. But while at the University of Miami, he took the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) on a whim, did well, “and magical things happened,” he said. He began his law studies at George Washington University, left school to serve two years in the U.S. Coast Guard, then returned to the classroom to earn a law degree at UM in 1973. In the years since, Grossman, 72, has co-founded the Coral Gables-based law firm that bears his name and built a reputation as one of the nation’s most celebrated trial lawyers, known for his prowess in high-profile cases of medical malpractice, product liability and wrongful death. He recently represented plaintiffs in the Florida International University bridge collapse and the high school mass shooting in Parkland.

Latest Achievement

This year marks the 30th anniversary of his firm, and this month Grossman receives the Florida Justice Association’s Al J. Cone Lifetime Achievement Award, honoring “an attorney who has pledged their life to upholding consumer rights and fighting for justice.” Grossman was previously named Trial Lawyer of the Year by the American Board of Trial Advocates of Florida, and was inducted into the Academy of Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame.

What He Says

In 2001 Grossman founded the nonprofit Margaux’s Miracle Foundation to honor the memory of his daughter Margaux, a Coral Gables native who died at 15 from Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. The foundation funds a research fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where she was treated. “My daughter’s passing has given me a lot of advantages in a strange way,” he says. “I understand clients with broken hearts, the improbability of life, and how things can change on a dime. I understand what they are going through, and thank God, I am able to articulate it.”