Elizabeth Grubman is an American publicist, manager and socialite. She is the daughter of entertainment lawyerAllen Grubman and his first wife, the late Yvette Grubman. In 2002, Grubman served 38 days in jail for an incident where she intentionally backed a Mercedes SUV into a crowd, injuring 16 people.
Early life
She is the daughter of entertainment lawyer Allen Grubman and his first wife, the late Yvette Grubman. Her parents divorced in 1988. Her mother had multiple sclerosis, and died of ovarian cancer at 58 in 2001.
Career
Grubman is well known as a publicist and manager. She founded her own company in 1996, and has represented Britney Spears, Jay-Z, and the Backstreet Boys. The 2005 reality show PoweR Girls on MTV centered on a group of young publicists working for Grubman's PR firm. The title is a reference to a 1998 cover story in New York magazine that profiled Grubman and several of her rivals, noting that "Lizzie was clearly the most powerful girl of all.".
On July 7, 2001, after being asked by security guards to remove her Mercedes from a fire lane, Grubman intentionally drove her father's Mercedes Benz SUV into a crowd of people outside of the Conscience Point Inn at 1976 North Sea Road in the Hamptons, injuring 16 people. Grubman was later charged in a 26-count indictment with felony crimes including second-degree assault, driving while intoxicated, and reckless endangerment. The subsequent trial garnered widespread media coverage, not only because of the particular circumstances of the crash, but because of what Richard Johnson, editor of the New York Posts Page Six, referred to as "the overreaching drama of class warfare." Grubman was alleged to have made an inflammatory statement before striking her victims with her vehicle: "Fuck you, white trash." Later, allegations arose that she received "special treatment" at the hands of police, who did not perform a Breathalyzer test despite allegations, and later, criminal charges, that she was intoxicated at the time of the incident. In the criminal trial, Grubman faced up to eight years in prison, but served only thirty-eight days in jail and received five years' probation after reaching a plea bargain for leaving the scene of a car accident. Grubman has said that the SUV incident was an accident.
