Steve Holland’s practice focuses on complex business litigation and arbitration, risk management, real estate development and contracting, and pre-litigation counseling generally, with an emphasis on residential and commercial development and construction industry matters.

With over thirty-five years of experience as a civil trial lawyer and risk management counselor, Steve advises clients on anticipating, avoiding, managing, resolving, and, if needed, litigating to judgment a wide variety of business, personal, commercial, and other civil disputes. Steve works with his individual, real estate, home builder/developer, and other clients in all aspects of their product development, construction, contracting, risk allocation, and sales. Steve has worked on virtually every aspect of complex civil litigation, including jury and court trials, arbitration, mediation, and direct settlements ranging from multi-million-dollar sales of business, to option agreements, construction disputes, including some involving hundred-million-dollar projects, including SB 800 (“right to repair law”) documentation, claims, and litigation, as well as high level intellectual property disputes. Steve also advises clients on distressed asset management, as well as receiverships and related issues. Steve has represented clients in state and federal courts in Northern, Central, Eastern, and Southern California, as well as in the American Arbitration Association, JAMS, ADR, and other arbitration, mediation and judicial reference services.

Representative matters Steve has recently handled include:

• Obtaining a full defense verdict in a Court Trial on multiple counts pled against a General Contractor client facing decades-old claims of alleged foundation defects, none of which could be proved.

• Obtaining a judgment for a corporate client on seven of nine issues in a bifurcated Court Trial on multiple breach of contract, Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200 (unfair competition) individual and class-action claims, alleged labor law violations, and other issues, leading to a global settlement, which included the resolution of PAGA claims

• Securing a favorable settlement after years of litigation and after a valuation arbitration on an option agreement as to a 22 acre, fully-entitled development in the Lafayette, California.

• Prosecution of fraud and security violation claims related to the U.S. EB-5 visa program to recover the theft of millions of dollars of immigrant investor funds by unqualified individuals and purported regional centers that falsely represented their ability to manage or create qualified investments, prosecuted in a lengthy Arbitration, resulting in a Judgment entered in the U.S. District Court, which was finally paid in full to client, inclusive of attorneys’ fees and Arbitration costs.

• Representing a court-appointed Receiver in a contentious litigation involving a large, mixed-use commercial/residential project in the Sunnyvale, California. The Receiver successfully turned around the failed project and obtained a Court Order approving his Final Account and Report and discharging all claims against the Receivership Estate and the Receiver.

• Prepared and customized SB 800 documentation for distressed projects recently purchased by clients and which were in various stages of completion.

• Negotiated long-term lease after posturing through litigation and mediation a decades-old dispute between interrelated public entities over the right to use, and the obligations to rehabilitate, real property used for wastewater disposal.

• Prepare, update and customize purchase and sales agreements for developers of residential homes and subdivisions.

• Counsel, manage, and coordinate with client the multi-million-dollar repair and remediation of high-rise condominium flood caused by a third-party, including, negotiating access to and payment from a major insurance company throughout a protracted re-build process.

• Represent major California builders as personal counsel, overseeing construction defect litigation and insurance-panel counsels’ efforts to defend claims and pursue all available indemnification, contract and additional-insured rights to aid in such defense.

• Represent Receivers in distressed commercial, residential and mixed-use projects, including multi-phase residential subdivisions, large commercial, office and shopping center projects.

Prior to joining HSW, Steve was a shareholder of a law firm in Walnut Creek. He also previously worked as a litigator for a major international law firm.