Gay Crosthwait Grunfeld

As it has been for most of her 16 years with Rosen Bien, Grunfeld’s most important case over the past year was the epic struggle to protect disabled inmates in California’s prisons, Armstrong v. Newsom, 4:94-cv-02307 (N.D. Cal., filed June 29, 1994).

This year, she achieved a significant victory. In September and March she won “remedial orders” from Senior U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken requiring that surveillance cameras be installed throughout six prisons and that the guards in those prisons wear body cameras. In her order, the judge found that guards had been “throwing disabled inmates out of wheelchairs, punching them, kicking them, or using pepper spray” when they posed no threat.

The March order also requires reforms to training and to the system for disciplining guards. Grunfeld is hoping to put cameras in two more prisons soon and eventually in all California prisons.

Grunfeld said getting cameras and better discipline in the prisons might be the most important matter she’s worked on. Bringing the long-running case to an end will require those things plus “a change of culture,” she said. “That’s what we’re working towards.”

She also is involved in litigation to improve conditions for disabled inmates in the Orange County jails and another to remedy dangerous conditions in the Yuba County Jail in Marysville. That case began in 1976. Hedrick v. Grant, 2:76-cv-00162 (E.D. Cal., filed Mar. 24, 1976).

“They take a long time because the cultures are very entrenched,” she said.

In March, Grunfeld won a $2 million wage-and-hour settlement from the Department of State Hospitals for paying patients just $1 per hour to do janitorial, laundry, clerical and other essential work. In May, she sued the Salvation Army for paying people in its drug and rehabilitation centers even less. They received a few dollars a week in “gratuities” redeemable only at the centers’ canteens.

And in August, she and co-counsel moved for class certification in what may be the first case to accuse a company running senior-living facilities of violating the ADA. Stiner v. Brookdale Senior Living Inc., 354 F. Supp. 3d 1046 (N.D. Cal., Jan. 25, 2019).

“This is a really important case,” she said. “Many, many people are affected” who live or used to live in these facilities in California.

— Don DeBenedictis