Stephen Snyder

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Steve Snyder is the author of several multi-billion dollar client saving solutions in some of the most challenging, enterprise-threatening litigation – complex, mass-tort litigation – to occur in the late 20th Century. His thirty years of trial and appellate practice has spanned disputes in the following areas: maritime, free speech, libel-slander and communications, labor/employment, technology licensing, asbestos and insurance coverage, medical devices, securities, banking and antitrust, juvenile product safety and tobacco.

Steve's clients have included Baxter Healthcare; Ciba-Geigy Corporation; Cisco Systems, Inc.; Fibreboard Corporation; GAF; Mac Arthur Co.; Matson Navigation Company; Mentor Corporation; Mercedes Benz of North America, Novartis, Inc.; Owens-Corning; Owens-Illinois, Pacific Maritime Association; Pittsburgh Corning, Shell Oil Company; SRI International; Union Oil Co./Unocal; Wells Fargo Bank; Westinghouse Electric; and several dozen insurers and their insured members of the Asbestos Claims Facility. Individual clients have included Howard Hughes and Patricia Hearst.

Steve continues to advise clients on strategies to meet and overcome major, enterprise-threatening litigation threats and to recover in litigation on major losses that threaten enterprise viability.

Steve was an Assistant Professor of Law at Northwestern University Law School from 1975-1977. He has served as a member of the Teaching Committee for the Federal Practice Program in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and has served routinely on the faculty for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, in training programs at Hastings College of Law, and in connection with Trial Advocacy Programs at Boalt Hall Law School at U.C. Berkeley and at Stanford Law School.

Community and professional activities have included service as a trustee of the Western Asbestos Settlement Trust, member of the Board of Directors of the Bar Association of San Francisco, member and Chair of the San Francisco Embarcadero YMCA, founding director of the Danny Foundation (a non-profit foundation advocating for nursery product safety), trustee of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology of the Graduate Theological Union, board member of Swords to Plowshares, a Bay Area foundation dedicated to helping veterans in need and board member of the Marines Memorial Association, a 501c(19) veterans organization dedicated in 1946 in San Francisco as a living memorial to members of our military who gave their lives in service to their country.

Steve graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1965 (with high honors), then earned a Master of Public Administration degree from Cornell University in 1971 and a J.D. degree (with distinction; Order of the Coif) from Cornell Law School in 1972. Steve spent nearly 30 years at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP, serving in numerous leadership positions, including Chair of the Firm from 1996 to 1998, then spent a year with Morgan Lewis & Bockius, before founding Snyder Miller & Orton LLP in January 2004.

Steve served on active duty as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps from 1965 to 1968. Steve lives with his wife, Faye, in Lafayette, California, a San Francisco Bay area suburb. He has four children and four grandchildren with his late wife, Judy.