In Memoriam, 0521 COBJ, Vol. 50, No. 5 Pg. 66

AuthorJeffrey Alan Goldstein
PositionVol. 50, 5 [Page 66]

50 Colo.Law. 66

In Memoriam

No. Vol. 50, No. 5 [Page 66]

Colorado Lawyer

May, 2021

August 17, 1944-August 28, 2020

Jeffrey Alan Goldstein

Jeffrey A. Goldstein—a tenacious attorney, civil rights advocate, judge, father, husband, brother, and friend to so many—passed away peacefully following surgery, with his wife and daughters at his side. With the support of dedicated doctors, nurses, and caregivers at Kaiser Permanente and St. Joseph Hospital, he had survived nearly four years coping with pancreatic cancer and its side effects.

Jeff was born in San Francisco on August 17, 1944, the eldest son of University of Southern California (USC) Dentistry Professor Dr. Charles Goldstein and Shirley Spector Goldstein. His grandparents on both sides were Jewish immigrants from Europe at the turn of the 20th century who built successful new lives in America. He grewup in West Los Angeles, where he graduated from University High School. His family included two brothers, Jon and Joel, and his sister Judy. In 1966, Jeff graduated from Valley State University (now California State University, Northridge), and U.S.C. Law School in 1969. After his first marriage and the birth of his two daughters, Janine (1969) and Genevieve (1970), the family moved to Denver in the early 1970s, where he resided until his death. Jeff married Marcia Tremmel Goldstein in 1976, and his third daughter Deanna was born in 1978.

Jeff began his law career in Long Beach, California, where he headed the Legal Aid Society office representing indigent clients. In Denver, he co-founded the law firm of Busacca, Goldstein, Hazleton, and Temko, which served a number of pro bono civil rights and community activist clients. He later cofounded Karp, Goldstein & Stem, and then established his own firm, Goldstein & Dodge, which primarily represented injured workers in Colorado's workers' compensation system. After a few years serving as special counsel in the labor law firm of Brauer, Buescher, Goldhammer & Kelman, Jeff left to serve as an administrative law judge, and later chief judge, for the Workers' Compensation Division, Colorado Department of Labor, until his retirement in 2018.

As members of the National Lawyers Guild during the 1970s and 1980s, Goldstein and his partners represented a number of political activists, including members of the American Indian Movement during the Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973, immigration rights activists, organizers in Denver's Chicano movement, labor organizers, military servicemen who were against the Vietnam War, and victims of police brutality.

Stemming from this work, Goldstein launched his decades-long representation of the heirs and descendants of the original Hispanic settlers on the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant, established by Mexico in 1844, in what is now Costilla County. As lead attorney in the landmark case known as the Taylor Ranch litigation (Lobato v. Taylor), Goldstein filed a class action lawsuit in 1981 against lumber baron and ranch owner Jack Taylor, who in the 1960s had won a federal court case barring local landowners and residents from exercising their historic rights to graze animals, gather firewood, and cut timber for construction of adobe homes on La Sierra—a 77,000-acre mountain tract of land that included 14,000-foot Culebra Peak. Representing class plaintiffs organized by the Land Rights Council in San Luis...

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