Remembering Barry Goldman
6/23/1938 – 5/06/2025
Practiced with Rose, Klein & Marias for over 50 years
Barry was a San Diego native, an alum of San Diego High School, and the grandson of Jewish immigrants. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Sherry, seven children, eleven grandchildren and four—soon to be five—great-grandchildren.
Days after his January 1965 bar admission, following UC Law San Francisco (’64) and UC Berkeley undergrad (’61), Barry found himself defending the accused in a string of criminal trials.
The advocacy and jousting were thrilling. Barry’s trial work had the emotion of his days as a tight end in high school, the heavy lifting of his work in construction, and a summer pumping gas and busting tires in Yosemite, not to mention the unpredictability of his nights as a bouncer at the Red Garter, where he worked during law school.
Barry loved court. Every day mattered, and he might have a say in the outcome. Then, just over a year in, it changed. Barry successfully defended a man accused of harming a child. While it went his way, Barry felt no reason to celebrate. Instead, on a Los Angeles morning in 1966, Barry took a walk and ended up in the office of Bob Steinberg at Rose, Klein & Marias.
What was to be an interview almost immediately became talk of where to go for lunch. A conversation the two would repeat for fifty years.
Bob would have a vision of why a particular occurrence was actually a case despite the present state of the law, and Barry would go to work on the bones and ballast and, more often than not, their kite would fly.
Two battles with cancer failed to slow Barry. Nothing could, it seemed. Barry continued to work with Rose, Klein & Marias fighting for injured workers until 2021. Each day, he’d bring the full measure of his lawyering skills to bear. Focused and forceful, like a North Atlantic ice breaker, on one hand, offset by quiet compassion for his clients on the other.
As is true for all of us, time continued to nip at Barry’s heels; at age 83, it got the best of him. He put his pen down and his feet up.
Over the decades, Barry supported or volunteered with an alphabet of lawyer groups: Board of Governors, CAALA; Board of Trustees, Judicial Appointments Committee and Attorney-Client Relations Committee LACBA; AAJ/ATLA; CAOC/CTLA. Barry lectured at USC and for CEB. That said, when not hobnobbing with lawyers, Barry was a member, if not over-the-top, of Raiders Nation when the team called Los Angeles home.
Barry was a connoisseur of fine Scotch. No, not drinking it himself, so much. Rather, pouring a glass for friends, and taking pleasure in their smiles.
A great mentor. A generous friend. A good man. We will miss you, B.I.G.