Robert Barlow

Rob is a founding partner at Garnett Powell Maximon Barlow & Farbes. Rob’s trial practice focuses on complex commercial litigation, insurance defense and coverage disputes, criminal defense, and intergovernmental disputes. His complex commercial litigation experience includes business divorces, private company disputes, real estate disputes, breaches of fiduciary duty, breaches of contract, fraud, and other business torts.

In his insurance defense practice, Rob has successfully defended dozens of businesses and their employees in premises liability, negligence, and bad faith breach of insurance cases. He has appeared in state and federal courts in Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. He has litigated thousands of criminal cases and hundreds of civil cases, taking 90 of those cases through jury trial.

At the start of his career, Rob served as a law clerk to Judge Morris B. Hoffman in both the civil and criminal divisions of the Denver District Court. Following his clerkship, he was a Deputy District Attorney in Denver and later in Durango, where he secured convictions at trial on some of the most serious offenses, including First Degree Murder and SAOC—Pattern of Abuse.

• Tried over 90 jury trials and 20 court trials
• Selected the jury in over 60 trials across three different states (Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico)
• In four years at national litigation defense law firm, won three defense verdicts in a row—Madalena v. Zurich Am. Ins. Co. (Denver County 17CV30788), Wagner v. Planned Parenthood Fed’n of Am., Inc. (Denver County 16CV31798), and Bitsoi v. Oscar Renda Contracting, Inc. (McKinley County, New Mexico D-1113-CV-2019-00611)
• Successfully argued a premises liability case before the Colorado Court of Appeals (Vasulka v. Ficco, 20CA524, cert. denied by 21SC953)
• Prosecutor in Denver and Durango, securing life-sentence convictions at trial in People v. Martinez-Perez (first degree murder) and People v. Wright (SAOC – pattern of abuse)
• Clerkship in civil and criminal divisions for Judge Morris B. Hoffman, Denver District Court

• Best Lawyers, Ones to Watch 2023-2025 — an honor bestowed upon select lawyers earlier in their careers for outstanding professional excellence in private practice in America

When he’s not rising to professional challenges on behalf of his clients, Rob is rising to challenges in the outdoors. He is an avid mountaineer and ultra-marathoner. His outdoor accomplishments include:

• Being the first person to hike Colorado’s 100 highest mountains without a car, biking between mountain ranges (2100 miles, 300,000′ vertical gain, 70 days; to date, only two people have done this).
• Being the 41st person to finish Nolan’s 14, an unofficial 100 miler that gains the summit of 14 14ers with a total vertical gain of 45,000’— a vertical gain equivalent of summiting Mount Everest (base camp is 16,000′, the summit is 29,000′) 3.5 times in only 2.5 days. His time was 59 hours and 29 minutes.
• Hiking to the top of a Colorado 14er 520 times (there are 58).
• Summitting Mt. Rainier (Washington State, 14,410′) via the Kautz glacier (Alaska Grade II/III), Iztaccihuatl (Mexico, 17,159′), Pico de Orizaba (Mexico, 18,490′), and Kilimanjaro (Tanzania, 19,341′).
• Running 100-mile ultramarathons.

Rob firmly believes that overcoming challenges in the backcountry translates to the courtroom.