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

The Takeover King

David McBride has played a part in some of the biggest mergers and acquisitions in U.S. history

In October 2004, Michael Ovitz stood before a Delaware judge and, in a sense, before America. He was defending the $140 million windfall the plaintiffs alleged he received after being fired from The Walt Disney Co. for his embattled 14-month tenure nearly a decade earlier. Shareholders wanted Disney and Ovitz to pay it back. “There were armies of reporters in the courtroom every day,” says David McBride, who was one of four attorneys representing Ovitz. “The most interesting thing to me …

Turning Al Anbar

Why Mark Budzinski left his med-mal practice to lead troops in Iraq

In February 2005, when Mark Budzinski arrived in Iraq with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, their destination, Al Anbar province—which includes Fallujah and Ramadi—was considered a Sunni insurgent stronghold and one of the most deadly places in Iraq for U.S. forces. Budzinski didn’t have to be there. He’d done his time. In 1993, when he was 17, his mother signed him up for the Marines. He served for a decade—through undergraduate and law school at the University of …

In Love with Kansas City

Real estate and railway attorney Allison Bergman keeps one of America’s great cities moving forward

In 1988, Allison Bergman took a road trip with her fiancé from Richmond, Va., where she was attending college, to Kansas City to meet her future in-laws. “I was thinking, Kansas City, Kansas, which is flat. But [Kansas City], Missouri is not flat, and this is a lovely, verdant city,” recalls Bergman from her Grand Boulevard office, home to one of the city’s oldest firms, Lathrop & Gage. “I fell in love with Kansas City and became convinced that I wanted to move here.” As long as …

Whistler’s Lawyer

Qui tam lawyer David Haron helps clients come forward

In May 1993, Jeanne Byrne arrived at David Haron’s office holding a prepaid legal card, purchased at Montgomery Ward. “She happened to have a card that she paid [something] like $20 per month for, and it got her a will and free telephone calls” with select lawyers, says the Frank, Haron, Weiner & Navarro attorney from his office in Troy. “So she carried the card with my name on it in her wallet, and came to me and said, ‘This is it.’” “It” was a 1992 New York Times …

A Solid Foundation

Affordable housing attorney Angela Christy opens doors for the underprivileged

There’s something to be said for tangible results. From Faegre & Benson’s 32nd floor conference room in downtown Minneapolis, Angela Christy points out the North Star Lofts along the Mississippi River, the East Village apartments in Elliot Park, and Riverside Plaza, with its definitive multicolored panels, near the University of Minnesota’s West Bank. She’s had a hand in all of them. When she looks at these buildings, she doesn’t just see bricks and mortar. She sees multiple …

Handing in Her Press Pass

How Carey Matovich’s early career as a journalist led her to law

In the late 1970s, as a young journalist in Billings, Carey Matovich attended back-to-back murder trials, calling in her stories to The Associated Press as a stringer. One trial involved the murder of a young store clerk; another, the murder of a young woman who was lured to the side of a rural highway by two men who claimed they had car trouble. It was in these moments that the recent college graduate decided she was destined to be on the other side of courtroom. “It seemed like every story …

Ahead of the Curve

How Rachel May Zysk landed a major terrorism case before even landing her J.D.

Rachel May Zysk was a third-year Stetson Law School student when she got pulled into one of the nation’s most publicized terrorism cases, U.S. v. Al-Arian, et al. The case centered on Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer engineering professor known for his outspoken political beliefs, and three co-defendants, including Hatem Fariz. All were charged with supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In the fall of 2004, while working as an intern in the Middle District Public …

After Disaster Strikes

Keith Griffin helps victims of tragedy piece their lives back together

Last December, on the anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Keith Griffin went to court on behalf of a Northridge doctor who lost his wife and daughter in that disaster. “It was a bad faith insurance case, where a doctor and his wife purchased $500,000 life insurance policies on each other,” says the member of Girardi|Keese. “They had a daughter who was a violinist. She had started a charity in L.A. called Strings by the Sea and had gone to her hometown in Sri Lanka to open …

Thou Shalt Not

Deputy District Attorney Wendy Patrick, M. Div., reconciles man’s law and God’s law

Who does Wendy Patrick get to spend her day with? Well, there’s the man who decapitated a stranger in Balboa Park—an act so gruesome that the judge withheld most crime scene photos in court. How about the two men charged with hunting down an illegal immigrant who was hiding from the Border Patrol, luring him to a secluded spot and attempting to “curb” him—i.e., placing his mouth against the curb and stomping on his head? And that was before she switched divisions. “My current …

The Record Setter

Alabama v. ExxonMobil was a defining moment in Robert Cunningham’s career, but he’d rather talk about what he’s doing today, such as fishing for the 200-pound tarpon

Robert Cunningham’s name will forever be tied to ExxonMobil. But for him, “that horse has been beaten to death.” Here, the Mobile-based Cunningham Bounds attorney expounds on his legal philosophy, the value of the jury system and what it was like representing the “Idea Man.”   Why law? My father was a trial lawyer. I went to court as a kid and watched trials in police court on Saturdays. It was great entertainment. I always knew when a jury was out, when a case was going on, and …

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