Ruth M. Bond

Bond has litigated employment and other matters on behalf of local governments and agencies for more than 15 years, first as a deputy city attorney for San Francisco and then as a partner in her law firm.

These days,she spends over half her time leading the firm’s practice conducting internal investigations for governmental entities.

Some investigations involve high-profile, politically sensitive matters, while many deal with allegations of workplace violence, discrimination, retaliation and other policy violations. She can’t disclose details of any investigation, but clients have included municipal governments such as Berkeley, Fullerton, Stockton and Tehema County and other entities like the Moraga-Orinda Fire District, the Seneca Healthcare District and U.C. Hastings College of Law.

Bond is leading a probe into allegations of discrimination and retaliation filed by high-level employees of an important city agency leveled against even higher-level staff. She is also following up on an anonymous complaint against someone in an executive-level department of state government.

At this stage, confidentiality is a must to protect the investigation. “Often, we don’t even want the target to know, until I notice their interview, that I’m doing an investigation,” Bond said.

But that’s only part of her practice. Bond is scheduled to begin a trial May 24 defending the city of Berkeley against age discrimination allegations by a police officer who was not promoted to sergeant. Gardner v. City of Berkeley, 3:18-cv-07784 (N.D.Cal., filed Dec 28, 2018).

“I think we have a very strong case,” she said. “The department didn’t promote him because of his work performance, not because of his age.”

Not all the work she and her firm do these days is on behalf of public entities. In the fall, Renee Public Law Group and another firm announced shareholder derivative lawsuits against several big corporations for failing at diversity efforts and for making false and misleading statements about diversity in their proxy statements.

Bond is deeply involved in suits against Oracle Corp., Pinterest Inc., Monster Beverage Corp. and NortonLifelock Inc. She said all four cases are still in the pleadings stage. They largely survived initial motions to dismiss in April.

— Don DeBenedictis