Mr. Steel’s practice emphasizes federal, state, and local regulatory compliance issues, crisis management, dispute resolution, and litigation under the Unfair Practices Act, Proposition 65, and other environmental, health, and safety laws. Mr. Steel has repeatedly been named as one of the state’s top environmental lawyers by Chambers USA, Legal 500 US, PLC Which lawyer?, Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers, and San Francisco Magazine.
Mr. Steel advises industrial companies—including automobile manufacturing, shipbuilding, electronics, communications, plastics, and oil concerns in the areas of hazardous substance handling, air quality and employee safety. Mr. Steel has also provided compliance counseling to a number of retail, pharmaceutical, biotech, food service, and grocery companies. He frequently defends multiparty actions alleging misrepresentation of product characteristics in particular, the failure to disclose the presence of chemicals identified as carcinogens or reproductive toxins. He defended actions alleging that faucets leach lead into drinking water, that calcium dietary supplements contain unsafe levels of lead, and that diesel engines expose people to unsafe levels of exhaust, among many others.
Mr. Steel also advises clients on matters involving California’s AB 32 (The Global Warming Solutions Act), including the development of greenhouse gas emission inventories, greenhouse gas reporting and California’s upcoming auction of allowances. He has been advising industrial companies on air quality regulatory requirements for more than 30 years, and has worked closely with the California Air Resources Board and California’s local air districts on a wide range of issues. With the passage of California’s climate legislation, Mr. Steel has continued to work with these regulators and his clients to ensure fair treatment and the smoothest transition to this new regulatory regime as possible.
Mr. Steel has extensive experience assisting clients in cases involving fatal or serious injuries, explosions, chemical releases, fires, and manufacturing, transportation, and construction accidents, as well as allegations of product toxicity or community harm. In this capacity, he helps the client to create a coordinated defense strategy from the very beginning of a government investigation or enforcement action, coordinating accident reconstruction and root cause analyses, working with technical experts, managing government interviews and document production, and directing public relations consultants.
Mr. Steel has appeared before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, the California Regional Water Quality Control Boards, and state and federal OSHA, as well as the state and federal courts.