Gay Crosthwait Grunfeld

Grunfeld said she saw a lot of injustice as a young person growing up in Waco, Texas. She graduated law school hoping to be a public interest lawyer and make a difference in people's lives.

She has been doing just that for over 25 years, focusing on complex civil litigation with an emphasis on civil rights, business and employment litigation.

"The meaning that a person can derive from pursuing justice in their own lives is indescribable," said the managing partner of Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP in San Francisco. "It's what I always hoped for in being part of a team--because none of this happens through one lawyer. It takes a whole team of lawyers, law firms, experts, staff and paralegals to achieve something bigger than ourselves."

In the past year, Grunfeld and her team have secured major victories on behalf of California prisoners with disabilities in Armstrong v. Newsom, 484 F. Supp.3d 808 (N.D. Cal. 2020), a long-running Americans with Disabilities Act case first filed in 1994. Grunfeld has helped achieve a series of ground-breaking precedents in the statewide class action, including an order requiring the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to deploy body-worn cameras at five prisons to protect incarcerated people with disabilities from abuse by correctional officers.

She also recently secured a $2.2 million settlement in the case of Jay Brome, a former California Highway Patrol officer who filed a lawsuit in 2016, saying he faced persistent harassment and discrimination from his coworkers because he's gay. Brome v. California Highway Patrol, et al., FCS047706 (Solano Sup. Ct., filed Sept. 16, 2016). Grunfeld worked with lead appellate counsel Lisa Ells to overturn a summary judgment granted on statute of limitation grounds. Brome v. California Highway Patrol (2020) 44 Cal. App.5th 786. The parties agreed to the settlement in July.

"I was very pleased that the State of California realized they should settle the case, and did settle the case--which was an extraordinary result to go from a dismissal to a $2.2 million settlement," Grunfeld said.

The Brome case, she said, aligns with other matters she has handled recently, including Armstrong and an ongoing lawsuit seeking to reform the San Diego County Jail system, which has the highest death rate among large county jails in California. Dunsmore et al. v. San Diego County Sheriff's Department et al. No. 3:20-cv-00406-AJB-WVG (S.D. Cal., filed Dec. 15, 2011).

"All of these cases involve situations in which government entities are not living up to their promise. They are violating the public trust by allowing discrimination and indifference to bring harm to people in their care, or to those who work for them," she said. "It's a great honor to be able to fight against those derelictions and violations of civil rights to try to effectuate change."

- Jennifer Chung Klam