About Aimée Groth

Aimée Groth Articles written 66

Former Super Lawyers associate editor Aimée Groth is currently a partner at HolacracyOne, an organizational design firm that helps companies become more agile and human-centered. A one-time technology journalist who covered Silicon Valley culture for Quartz, she also served as a senior editor at Business Insider. In 2017, Simon & Schuster published her book The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, which Kirkus Reviews called “An intriguing business/sociological chronicle with wider implications for modern corporate practices.”

Articles written by Aimée Groth

Controlling the Second

After handling a two-engine failure at 9,000 feet, nothing fazes Brett Godfrey in the courtroom

There was a moment when Brett Godfrey thought he might die. He was steering a twin-engine Cessna 421 over the Rocky Mountains late on a Friday night, after a grueling week of trial in San Jose, Calif. He and a colleague had just dropped off their client in Salt Lake and were en route to Denver to enjoy a three-day weekend. The second leg of their journey started smoothly, but at 23,000 feet, the first engine died. By midnight, they hit a thick layer of clouds and things got worse. Godfrey …

Search, Rescue and Mediate

Attorney Bonnie Schriner and her search and rescue dog are on call

Hurricane Katrina revealed the best and the worst of humanity, which Bonnie M.J. Schriner experienced from the front lines. The devastating hurricane hit on a Monday, and by Tuesday she deployed with FEMA’s Colorado Task Force 1 mission, which included 31 rescue workers, four of whom were canine handlers. The New Orleans airport was closed, so they drove 29 hours from Denver to the Deep South, hauling more than 100,000 pounds of equipment. She’d spent years preparing. In the late 1970s, she …

Tough Crowd

Timothy Coates’ stint as a comedian helps when he argues before the U.S. Supreme Court

As a college student in the 1970s, Timothy Coates performed 1 a.m. comedy shows in Long Beach, Calif., for Navy guys “who were inebriated and hadn’t yet found a companion,” he says with a laugh. “They would start to throw ashtrays. ... Luckily, I never got hurt. So today, no matter how tough a panel, I know the judges will never throw something at me.” Coates spent a year chasing his dream of making people laugh for a living, then decided there must be a better way. After graduating …

Casino Royale

John A. O’Malley argued the case of a lifetime against billionaire Sheldon Adelson

Most people don’t want to battle Las Vegas gaming mogul and self-made billionaire Sheldon Adelson. But in Suen v. Las Vegas Sands Corp., John A. O’Malley, a business litigator with Norton Rose Fulbright, relished the opportunity. “It was a trial lawyer’s dream case,” he says. Back in 2000, Hong Kong businessman Richard Suen mentioned to Adelson the possibility of getting a gaming license in Macau, a former Portuguese territory, then arranged meetings between Adelson, Sands president …

Safe Haven

San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program dedicates itself to helping society’s most vulnerable

As a staff attorney for the San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program, Amy Fitzpatrick would meet some clients in their cars outside the program’s building in the Gaslamp Quarter. Many felt as if they had exhausted all their options.  One client lost everything after being badly beaten by his partner. He also had advanced AIDS and was struggling to receive his Social Security benefits because he had changed his name.  “He would call me from a pay phone, and I would go down and meet him in his …

Dignity for Detroit's Down and Out

Bodman PLC provides much-needed aid to the city’s homeless and low-income residents

Michigan was hit hard by the Great Recession. The foreclosure crisis pushed many people out of stable housing, and the collapse of the auto industry left many without jobs. Statewide homelessness hit a high, topping 100,000 people in 2009 and 2010.  “Detroit fell on its hardest times when the world wasn’t watching,” says Kimberly Paulson, pro bono counsel at Bodman PLC. The more than 150-attorney firm is committed to alleviating the legal issues that accompany poverty and homelessness …

The Former Outcast

Why personal injury attorney Marvin Salenger identifies with his clients

While in grade school, Marvin Salenger of Brownsville, Brooklyn, was diagnosed with acute rheumatic fever, a debilitating, inflammatory disease that leads to painful swelling of the joints. The isolation he suffered was nearly as bad as the disease itself. “In those days people didn’t know much about rheumatic fever,” says Salenger, of Salenger, Sack, Kimmel & Bavaro in Long Island. “No one visited me because they were all afraid their children were going to get it.” This was no …

T. Boone Pickens, Mickey Mouse and More

Delaware corporate litigator Greg Williams represents business titans

Greg Williams once nearly lost his job at a fast food joint. He was working at Gino’s, a chain that sold burgers and Kentucky Fried Chicken, to pay his way through college at the University of Delaware. “I was mouthing off,” he says, “and the assistant manager says to me, ‘The door swung open for you to come in, and it’ll swing open for you to leave.’ Nobody’s indispensable. Any institution or business can get along without you.” That may have been true then. But today, some …

The Don of Criminal Defense Attorneys

Gerald Shargel defends collars of every color … as well as the mob

“I really find it boring to have to explain what I do. I’m tired of explaining it.” It’s an April afternoon, and criminal defense attorney Gerald Shargel, dressed impeccably, occasionally doodling on a legal pad, is discussing his cadre of clients from his 45th floor office hovering over Lexington Avenue and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan. Not that he feels the need to defend them. He’s already done that in the courtroom. In fact, he sees people who criticize his work as uninformed …

At the Crossroads

A train collides with a car full of young people, slicing the vehicle in two. There are heart-wrenching phone calls. One is to attorney Sharon L. Van Dyck

It’s devastating enough to lose a loved one in a tragic car accident. To have to relive the pain every day, waiting on whims of the Minnesota legal system, drains the soul. That’s what the parents of Brian Frazier, Bridgette Shannon, Corey Chase and Harry Rhoades Jr.—none of whom were older than 20 when they died after their car was struck by a train—have grappled with for nearly a decade. At the time of publication, the Minnesota Supreme Court had yet to decide whether or not to uphold …

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