Robert Westberg

1932 - 2017

Robert Myers Westberg

Robert Myers Westberg died July 25th at his home in Kalispell, Montana, surrounded by his loving family. He was 85. A retired lawyer, he and his wife Nancy moved to Montana in 2000 from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Westberg was born in Seattle on July 12, 1932. His father, Alfred J. Westberg, was a lawyer and served as a Senator in the Washington State Legislature. His mother, Jean Myers Westberg, was the daughter of a prominent Seattle architect. He attended the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and Princeton University. Westberg was admitted to the University of Washington School of Law after his junior year at Princeton. By the end of his first year, he was first in his class and became Editor of the Law Review.

Westberg clerked for Judge F. G. Hamley at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and then was a partner in the San Francisco law firm Pillsbury, Madison, and Sutro, where he worked for 50 years. He specialized in antitrust law, appellate work, and legal ethics. Among his clients were Bethlehem Steel, AT&T, BART, and Chevron.

In one of Westberg's most significant cases, he represented, pro bono, a group of African American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Pacific Islander firefighters in a successful racial discrimination suit against the San Francisco Fire Department, which at that time had only one African American firefighter. He successfully argued a landmark point on the issue of custody under the Miranda Rule before the Supreme Court of the United States, representing a San Quentin death row inmate.

Westberg was a member of the Bar in Washington State, California, New York State, and the District of Columbia. He was Chairman of the California State Bar Association Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct, President of the San Francisco Legal Aid Society and - for several years - President of the Mill Valley Library Board.

He is survived by Nancy, his wife of 62 years, of Kalispell, Montana; daughters Britt La Gatta, Jennifer Li, Catherine Westberg; and honorary daughter Diane Kefauver.