Steve Kimball is of counsel to DLA Piper's Litigation practice, based in San Francisco.

Mr.Kimball represents plaintiffs and defendants in a variety of civil and appellate litigation, including commercial, insurance, administrative, real property, employment and product liability matters.

He joins DLA Piper from Stevens, O'Connell & Jacobs. From 2000 to 2003, Mr. Kimball was a judicial attorney for Associate Justice Daniel M. Kolkey of the Third District Court of Appeal. He worked on complex matters involving a broad range of subjects, including cases that resulted in published decisions on foreclosure, public contracts, security and guaranty agreements, implied easements, state corporate taxation, employment discrimination, family leave, dangerous condition of business property and trespass by e-mail, as well as criminal matters.

Before 2000, he worked for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Sacramento and San Francisco and Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom in Boston, where he represented defendants in diverse matters, including securities, accounting malpractice, products liability, partnership, wrongful termination, executive compensation and disability discrimination cases.

Representative Matters

• Represented Sony in an action for long-term compensation by an executive who left to work for a competitor. Judgment for Sony on a motion to dismiss upheld on appeal
• Represented cellular telephone companies against claims under Business and Professions Code §§ 17200 and 17500. Trial court granted motion to dismiss ruling that plaintiff's claims were preempted by federal law
• Represented a bank in over 40 actions involving foreclosure of rental property, including appointment of receivers pending trustee’s sale of the property
• Defended Southern California Edison in the Big Creek forest fire litigation and authored an article published in The Federal Lawyer (August 2009) critiquing novel environmental damages theories debuted by the federal government in the Big Creek case
• Obtained injunctive relief for a technology company against an ex-employee involved in the large-scale theft of equipment to sell on the Internet and defeated the defendant's motion for stay pending resolution of the parallel criminal case
• Represented an Indian tribe in a challenge to the decision to remove individuals from the tribal membership roll
• Defended a developer in a suit by an Indian tribe for breach of fiduciary duty
• Represented a technology company in a Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower trial before an administrative law judge that resulted in dismissal of all claims
• Defended a French helicopter engine manufacturer in an action involving the death of two county sheriff's deputies and serious injuries to a third deputy
• Represented the defendant, the general partner of a hotel chain, in a class action that was dismissed when the trial court ruled that California was not a convenient forum
• Defended the owners of a Parkmerced apartment complex in an action by a labor contractor that ended in settlement without payment by the client
• Represented SMUD and other public electrical power providers in a mandamus action against Proposition 16, a PG&E-sponsored initiative designed to lock in service areas, which was defeated in the 2010 election
• Represented a plaintiff in a contract action against an Indian tribe, including successful defense against the tribe's preemption and sovereign immunity motions in state trial court and on appeal, and obtained dismissal of the federal action filed by the tribe seeking stay of state court action
• Represented a real estate investor in a contract action against a school district that sold property with undisclosed arsenic contamination