The cause was meningoencephalitis, an inflammation and infection of the brain and its lining, complicated by pneumonia, said attorney Gigi Gordon, a longtime friend and colleague. Berke practiced law in Los Angeles for 36 years, first as a public defender and later at the Center for Law in the Public Interest and in private firms. 'He was one of the most respected defense lawyers in this community,' said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. 'He made it his life's mission to ensure that the state not be permitted to deny the dignity of individuals, whether they were complaining of police misconduct or whether they were incarcerated.' As a public defender from 1973 to 1981, Berke played a leading role in two cases that expanded access to police personnel files in cases alleging a pattern of officer misconduct. Kelvin L. v. Superior Court (1976) pertained to prior acts of excessive police force, while People v. Zamora (1980) established that the destruction of evidence deprived the defendant of a fair trial. 'This was the first successful effort by lawyers to pierce the shield of police officer confidentiality,' said Gordon, who directs the Post-Conviction Assistance Center, a public interest law firm funded by Los Angeles County. 'It changed the legal landscape in a lot of ways.' Berke also helped defend a number of inmates wrongfully convicted because of false testimony by jailhouse informants. In 1991, his client, Arthur Grajeda, was freed from life imprisonment after Berke proved that the informant in his case was not credible. In one of his longest-running legal battles, Berke and two colleagues, Janet Harold and Michael Rubin, established that lawyers who prevail in lawsuits brought in the public interest are entitled to compensation for their work. He and Rubin successfully argued the case before the California Supreme Court in 2008. That fight stemmed from Harold and Berke's advocacy on behalf of inmates in the state's prisons who were being underpaid by an outside employer, a violation of the Prison Inmate Labor Initiative of 1990. They won that case, Vasquez v. State of California, but the state refused to pay the attorneys' fees, although the so-called private attorney general statute requires the losing party to do so. The Supreme Court ordered the state to pay $1.25 million in fees for their nine-year effort. Rubin said the high court ruling was a victory not merely for Harold and Berke but for all California public interest lawyers because it ensures that private lawyers 'will take up the cudgel and work in the public interest and ensure that laws are enforced as the Legislature meant them to be enforced.' Berke was born in New York on March 18, 1948. He earned a bachelor's degree from Pomona College in 1969 and a law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1973. After eight years as a Los Angeles County public defender, he was a staff attorney for two years at the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles. From 1983 to 1990 he practiced at the firm of Overland & Berke in Santa Monica. Since 1991 he had a solo practice, also in Santa Monica. 'Bob was a true believer,' Gordon said. 'He would fight endlessly and relentlessly because he decided the cause was just. He was a real cause guy. It defined his entire career.' He is survived by his mother, Sylvia Berke; and his son, Chad. 