Steven N. Williams

In over twenty-five years of practice Steven N. Williams has handled successfully and with distinction all aspects of litigation and trial in state and federal courts and in private arbitration.

Mr. Williams has played a lead role in many of the most prominent antitrust class cases litigated in the United States over the last decade, including In re Automotive Parts Antitrust Litigation, In re Static Random Access Memory Litigation, Precision Associates v. Panalpina World Transport, and In re Transpacific Air Transportation Litigation. He has helped recover more than $2 billion and has been responsible for new law including ground-breaking decisions narrowing the scope of the Filed Rate Doctrine and permitting civil damage claims in E. & J. Gallo Winery v. EnCana Corp., 503 F.3d 1027 (2007) and Wortman v. All Nippon Airways, 854 F.3d 606 (2017), and a ruling that “umbrella damages” are available under California state law. County of San Mateo v. CSL, Ltd., 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 116342 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 20, 2014). He represents a plaintiff class of content moderators against Facebook, Inc., alleging that Facebook failed to protect the class from developing post-traumatic stress disorder and other adverse effects resulting from constant viewing of offensive and extremely disturbing videos, images, and broadcasts posted to Facebook. This "first of its kind" lawsuit resulted in reaching a settlement of $52 million and workplace improvements with Facebook.

Mr. Williams, previously a long-time partner at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP, practices in the fields of litigation, trial, and client counseling, with an emphasis on representation of civil plaintiffs in antitrust matters. He has served in leadership positions in more than a dozen antitrust class cases throughout the United States. During his career, he has represented claimants in cases involving memory chips, pharmaceuticals, air passenger transportation, air cargo transportation, cathode ray tubes, capacitors, resistors, flash memory, lithium-ion batteries, financial products and services, poultry, and water. He has been appointed to represent classes, and in non-class cases he has represented the Chief Justice of California, the Judicial Council of California, Consumers Union of United States, Inc., the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta, public pension funds, private investment funds, many cities and counties of California, public utilities including water districts, and individual consumers.

Mr. Williams has written and lectured on various topics including antitrust, multidistrict litigation, complex litigation, electronic discovery, MTBE litigation, regulatory developments in environmental law, contractual issues in environmental cleanups, and habeas corpus. He has spoken at many venues, including the American Bar Association Antitrust Section Spring Meeting, the California State Bar Antitrust, UCL and Privacy Section, the New York State Bar Association Antitrust Section, and the Consumer Attorneys of California. He is the author or co-author of many legal publications.

Mr. Williams was appointed by the Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC) as a member of the California Discovery Subcommittee for revision of California discovery rules and statutes relating to electronic discovery and electronically stored information, 2007-2008. He has given yearly presentations to CAOC on topics of civil discovery in California. He is currently in leadership with the American Bar Association Antitrust Section and is a member of the International Cartel Task Force and the Executive Committee of the Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws. He is an advisor to the Executive Committee of the California Lawyers Association Section on Antitrust, Unfair Competition Law, and Privacy Law, and was chair of the 2017 Golden State Antitrust Institute. He is a Board Member of Public Justice and past Chairman of the Board of Community Gatepath, an organization dedicated to serving the needs of developmentally disabled children and adults. He received the Justice & Diversity Center (JDC) of the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Federal Pro Bono Project 2020 Crystal Award for “Outstanding Volunteer of the Year.” In 2021, Super Lawyers profiled his and the firm's pro bono success and Chambers and Partners shortlisted the firm's pro bono efforts in its Diversity & Inclusion Awards.

Mr. Williams received his J.D. from the Fordham University School of Law and his B.A. in Russian and Slavic Studies from New York University.