Gretchen Garrison graduated from the University of Missouri in 1982 with a degree in Hospital Administration. She earned her law degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1986, where she served as managing editor of the UMKC Law Reviewand on the Moot Court Board.
Ms. Garrison is admitted to practice before all Missouri state courts, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. She has appeared before every appellate court in the State of Missouri, as well as the United States Supreme Court, in over 70 appeals.
She is a member of The Missouri Bar, the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater St. Louis, and American Bar Association. She is a former chairperson of the Appellate Practice Committee of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis and served on the Missouri Supreme Court Electronic Discovery Committee.
Prior to joining Gray, Ritter & Graham, Ms. Garrison was a partner in one of the region’s largest law firms, where her practice concentrated in commercial litigation, health care, and appeals. She has served as Associate General Counsel for a large health insurance company and as General Counsel for the Missouri Department of Health. Ms. Garrison also served as primary appellate counsel to the Missouri Department of Revenue, as well as Deputy Appellate Counsel for the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, where she was responsible for appellate policy and argument on behalf of state agencies.
Ms. Garrison’s primary practice areas are commercial litigation, complex litigation, and appellate law. She also has expertise in regulatory/administrative law, health care, and taxation. In her commercial practice, Ms. Garrison represents individuals and businesses in a wide variety of disputes including negligence, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, shareholder rights, tortious interference, trespass, and breach of contract. She has successfully represented parties in large-stakes litigation involving acquisitions and mergers, telecommunications, property rights, banking, health care, insurance, medical equipment, license agreements, government programs, and other business areas. Ms. Garrison also has represented thousands of consumers from Missouri and other states in class actions and other complex litigation against large corporations, including Bayer Corp., AT&T, Inc., Aurora Dairy Corp., Stoneville Pedigreed Seed Company, and Merck & Co., culminating in multi-million dollar recoveries. She was trial counsel in three trials having bellwether status in In re Genetically Modified Rice Litigation, multi-district litigation resolved by a $750 million settlement, defending each plaintiffs’ verdict as lead appellate counsel prior to settlement. She also was lead appellate counsel in associated complex fee litigation.
Ms. Garrison recently was on the team that secured a $217 million plaintiffs’ verdict in In re Syngenta AG MIR162 Corn Litigation, which preceded a $1.51 billion settlement for farmers around the country.
Ms. Garrison is listed in The Best Lawyers in America® for Appellate Law, and has been selected to Missouri & Kansas Super Lawyers [among the top 5 percent of lawyers in Missouri and Kansas] since 2010, in the area of Business Litigation.
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