Legal Case Files

Cases in this series are mostly related to civil rights and civil liberties and efforts to combat racial discrimination and police brutality; they include both those in which Treuhaft's partners or associates represented clients as well as those for which Treuhaft was the lead attorney. (If not otherwise noted, attorneys are indicated by their initials on their original folders: RET for Treuhaft, DOB for Doris Walker, MB for Malcolm Burnstein). Clients--defendants, plaintiffs, or targets of grand jury investigations--are mainly progressive or leftwing political organizations and individuals associated with these organizations or individuals involved in cases springing from political events. Organizations and individuals associated with them include the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton; the Free Speech Movement (from the beginning, with the more than 700 arrested, through the appeals process), Mario Savio and Treuhaft himself; Civil Action Day Committee (clients arrested in a civil disobedience action at a draft induction center to protest conscription); and Berkeley Barb (newspaper), Robert Scheer, John Poland. Briefs, statements and correspondence document Malcolm Burnstein's defense of eighteen members of the Black Panther Party arrested after its widely-publicized demonstration in front of and inside the California state capitol while armed with deliberately unconcealed rifles. Documents from this file include handwritten statements from each of the defendants. Files for Treuhaft clients arrested during the events of People's Park include what appear to be police surveillance photographs and audiotape obtained during the legal discovery process. Case files for two child custody cases involving controversy over parents' lifestyle include the widely-publicized Mark Painter case. Treuhaft also represented fellow Bay Area radical attorneys Faye Stender and Charles Garry (both in politically-associated contempt of court-related cases). A small sample of workers' compensation cases illustrate Treuhaft's work in this field, in which he specialized nearly exclusively during the last decade of his legal practice.