Steve Lopez Named to 2025 “Top 40 Under 40” in California by Daily Journal

Gibbs Mura is proud to announce that Steve Lopez has been named to the Daily Journal‘s 2025 list of “Top 40 Under 40” in California.

Steve was celebrated for his work representing thousands of families who lost homes in the Northern California wildfires caused by PG&E. As the Daily Journal reported, Steve and co-counsel developed a client-centered approach to document each family’s losses, and in overseeing the process he ultimately touched each individual case. The bankruptcy case presented logistical hurdles, including maintaining contact and responding to discovery requests for clients lacking stable housing.

The team recovered over $1 billion for the families they represented. As Steve said to the Daily Journal, “There’s no better feeling I have as a lawyer than calling up a family who’s lost everything in their homes, sometimes literally even living in the streets, and being able to tell them: ‘Hey, you have a settlement offer that can change your life and get a roof over your head.'”

As told to the Daily Journal, Steve has been drawn to cases that offer both intellectual challenge and meaningful results for clients facing hardship. The son of immigrants, he described how he saw people in his family and community denied fair treatment. Steve knew he wanted to create tangible change, and after initially trying work in government and politics, found a way to make direct impact in the law.

Steve also recently helped achieve class certification in a case against Honda alleging it sold vehicles with a known defect in their Honda Sensing automatic braking system, now representing over 800,000 drivers across eight states, as reported by the Daily Journal. Steve drafted the initial complaint in 2019 with his colleague Dave Stein. The case has required understanding engineering principles and handling discovery in multiple languages.

Steve serves on the plaintiffs’ steering committee in the Social Media Addiction Cases in Los Angeles Superior Court. He represents families whose children have been injured by technology. As told by the Daily Journal, Steve is now working with co-counsel across the country to prepare for trial in January 2026 against major technology companies.

What’s changed his practice over the years? According to the Daily Journal, it’s technology. Steve shared an example of how, thanks to technology making it feasible to represent large numbers of people individually through streamline communication and evidence collection, he recently helped file arbitrations for more than 30,000 drivers in an Amazon Flex employment misclassification case. “To the extent that technology makes it easier for more people to assert their legal rights,” Steve said to the Daily Journal, “I think it’s a positive for the world.”

Established in 1893, Daily Journal is known as one of the foremost legal publications in the U.S. The publication is widely respected by California attorneys in all practice areas for its extensive coverage and profiles of judges, appellate decisions, and other notable legal information.

About Gibbs Mura

Gibbs Mura is a California-based law firm committed to protecting the rights of clients nationwide who have been harmed by corporate misconduct. We represent individuals, whistleblowers, employees, and small businesses across the U.S. against the world’s largest corporations. Our award-winning lawyers have achieved landmark recoveries and over a billion dollars for our clients in high-stakes class action and individual cases involving consumer protection, data breach, digital privacy, and federal and California employment lawsuits. Our attorneys have received numerous honors for their work, including “Top Plaintiff Lawyers in California,” “Top Class Action Attorneys Under 40,” “Consumer Protection MVP,” “Best Lawyers in America,” and “Top Cybersecurity/ Privacy Attorneys Under 40.”