Pomerantz Senior Counsel Stanley M. Grossman Wins Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Law Journal

As the New York Law Journal notes, their Lifetime Achievement Award “isn’t for the lawyer who notches an occasional outstanding year but for the professional who does it year in and year out.” And that perfectly describes Stanley M. Grossman, Pomerantz’s Senior Counsel, who was just recognized by the New York Law Journal for his “impact on the legal community and the practice of law over an entire career.”

Throughout his five decades as an attorney, Mr. Grossman has enjoyed a distinguished legal career as a tireless defender of shareholder rights and a champion for injured investors. He has been praised by the courts and recognized as a leader of the plaintiffs’ securities bar as he litigated landmark cases across the nation and before the United States Supreme Court, shaping the law.

Mr. Grossman’s broad experience includes trials and litigation of complex corporate, securities, and antitrust matters. His mastery of the law, formidable courtroom skills, and talent as an orator earned him the respect of his adversaries and have resulted in recoveries for damaged investors aggregating well over $1 billion.

While serving as Managing Partner of Pomerantz, Mr. Grossman, a natural leader, advanced the Firm’s reputation for shaping the law while building a team of talented and diverse lawyers who put the interests of the client first.  Along the way, his personal and professional generosity led him to mentor younger attorneys who have become stars in their own right, including current Managing Partner Jeremy Lieberman and Partner Murielle Steven Walsh.

Within his first year of joining Pomerantz in 1969, the young Mr. Grossman found himself appearing before the Supreme Court in support of Partner William E. Haudek in Ross v. Bernhard, litigation which secured the groundbreaking decision that guaranteed injured investors the right to a jury trial in derivatives actions.

Following this auspicious beginning, Mr. Grossman served as lead counsel for the plaintiffs in Shelter Realty v. Allied Maintenance in 1977, an antitrust action that established proper standards for appeals to class actions.

In 1981, just into his 40s, Mr. Grossman served as lead trial counsel for the plaintiff in Gartenberg v. Merrill Lynch, the first case ever tried under the newly enacted Section 36(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 that stated that an investment advisor to a mutual fund has a fiduciary duty to the fund. The standard for fiduciary duty that he presented during litigation was later adopted by the Supreme Court and is now commonly referred to as “the Gartenberg standard.”

Gartenberg Judge Milton Pollack noted: “[I] can fairly say, having remained abreast of the law on the factual and legal matters that have been presented, that I know of no case that has been better presented so as to give the Court an opportunity to reach a determination, for which the Court thanks you.”

That same year, the New York Law Journal honored Mr. Grossman’s courtroom successes by featuring him in their article, “Top Litigators in Securities Field — A Who’s Who of City’s Leading Courtroom Combatants” (8/1/83).

On appeal in Kronfeld v. Trans World Airlines in 1988, Mr. Grossman won an extremely rare reversal of a decision by the renowned Judge Edward Weinfeld when the Second Circuit ruled that the wrong legal standard was applied in the granting of summary judgement.

In June 1990, Mr. Grossman was appointed by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York to chair a special blue-ribbon commission on the future of the City University of New York. The President of the Association described the Commission’s Report as “insightful, measured and persuasive . . . a striking example of the very best of what this Association can do.”

In 1992, Judge Pollack called upon Mr. Grossman to serve on the Executive Committee charged with allocating to claimants the $2 billion obtained in settlements with Drexel Burnham & Co. and Michael Milken following the infamous junk bond scandal.

Mr. Grossman served as president of the National Association of Securities Attorneys (“NASCAT”). He represented NASCAT in meetings with the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, members of Congress and of the Executive Branch in furnishing input and commentary on legislation which became the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (“PSLRA”).

In 1998, at the invitation of Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Grossman testified before Congress on proposed legislation dealing with “federalization of state class actions.” Subsequently, Mr. Grossman was requested to participate with Congressional counsel in drafting proposed legislation.

Mr. Grossman led groundbreaking litigation in 2005 in EBCI v. Goldman Sachs that resulted in the seminal ruling that underwriters of IPOs owe fiduciary duties to investors.

In 2008, after years of hard-fought litigation, Mr. Grossman was back before the Supreme Court, presenting his argument in the landmark case of Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta, an action considered to be the most important securities case in a generation.

Throughout his career, Mr. Grossman has been actively involved in civic affairs, serving on committees for the Association of the Bar of the City of New York including the Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethnics and State Courts of Superior Jurisdiction. He was also a member of the American Bar Association’s Litigation Bar and served as a director of the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education, as well as a board member of the Appleseed Foundation, a national public interest advocacy group.

Mr. Grossman has been a passionate supporter of legal education through generous donations, sponsorships, and frequent speaking engagements at law schools and professional organizations. He has made substantial contributions to law schools for the advancement of social scholarship and sponsors the Nancy and Stanley Grossman CUBE Innovators Fellowship at Brooklyn Law School. He served on the Council of the Dean at Brooklyn Law School, where he was honored in 2012 as Alumnus of the Year. And he has lectured to the profession under the auspices of the Southern Federal Securities Institute, Columbia University School of Law, Duke University Law School, University of Arizona Law School, Brooklyn Law School, ALI-ABA, PLI, the N.Y. State Bar Association, and the Association of the Bar of the City of N.Y.

Over the course of his half century of service to the law, Stanley Grossman has left an indelible mark as one of the nation’s most influential securities litigators.

The new Lifetime Achievement award winners will be featured in the New York Law Journal’s upcoming Professional Excellence magazine and honored in October 2020 at the New York Legal Awards in New York City.