The POWER List: Maurice B. Graham

Gray, Ritter & Graham, St. Louis

Maurice Graham serves as the president of Gray, Ritter & Graham and has given a lifetime of service to legal institutions.

Graham served on The Missouri Bar’s board of governors from 1980 to 1990, including as president from 1988 to 1989, then was a member of the ABA House of Delegates from 1990 to 1994. 

Graham earned his law degree in 1962 from the University of Missouri and remains heavily involved in the school. His six-year term on the board of curators expired earlier this year, though the governor has not yet named a successor. He also has been president of the University of Missouri Law School Foundation and chairman of the law school’s $17 million endowment campaign.

In 2013, Graham won a $10.8 million verdict on behalf of the family of Shannon Dodson, a volunteer for Legal Services of Eastern Missouri who died during a heart procedure. Her husband, Jason Dodson, is now a St. Louis County circuit judge.

The verdict was reduced to $2.2 million under the state’s noneconomic damage cap, which the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed in a ruling that set an important precedent on the types of cases to which the cap may be applied.