Steven Vanderporten is a Partner and General Counsel of Gould Grieco & Hensley (GGH). A seasoned litigator who built his foundation in high-stakes commercial, class action, and mass tort cases before crossing to the plaintiffs’ bar, Steven now leads strategy on some of the country’s most consequential institutional accountability cases, and is at the leading edge of litigation holding Big Tech platforms accountable for the harm their products do to children.

His diverse experience includes representing clients in high-profile cases involving exposure to toxic contaminants, consumer protection, product liability, sports-related concussions, institutional neglect, catastrophic injury and mass casualty events, international trade conspiracy, and other high-impact litigation.

Steven serves on the Plaintiffs’ Expert Subcommittee in In re: Roblox Corporation Child Sexual Exploitation and Assault Litigation, MDL No. 3166 (N.D. Cal.) — the federal multidistrict litigation involving allegations the children’s gaming platform failed to protect minors from sexual exploitation, grooming, and sexual abuse. He filed among the first cases consolidated into the MDL, is one of the attorneys handling parallel state court proceedings in California’s Judicial Council Coordinated Proceedings (JCCP), and he represents more than 4,000 families to hold Big Tech accountable for disregarding known risks to minor users. Steven also represents the YouTube creator known as “Schlep,” whose ban from Roblox following his viral videos exposing alleged predators on the platform drew national coverage and prompted public responses from members of Congress and state attorneys general.

Steven has discussed the safety crisis facing children online on the top-ranked Shawn Ryan Show, the Dr. Phil show, on Chris Hansen’s documentary Dangerous Games, in Rolling Stone and Elle magazines, and in recurring coverage by NBC, ABC, Fox, NPR, and broadcast outlets across the country. Steven’s commentary extends to the rapidly evolving legal and legislative landscape governing children’s online safety, including Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, COPPA 2.0, and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), and to legislative and lobbying efforts to protect platforms at the expense of vulnerable minors.

Behind the public profile is a track record of decisive courtroom results. In Doe 4 v. UHS of Hartgrove, Inc., 2026 WL 446463 (N.D. Ill. 2026), Steven and his team defeated an attempted “snap removal” in a sexual abuse case against one of the country’s largest operators of behavioral health facilities—a decision in which the court characterized the defense tactic as “one of the most egregious ‘snap removal’ abuses of the Forum Defendant Rule that this Court has encountered.” That win is part of Steven’s broader strategic role in cases targeting for-profit operators of youth residential treatment centers, where he takes lead on dismantling the playbook of legal maneuvers institutional defendants deploy to frustrate discovery and evade accountability. He brings the rigor and motion practice skills of a commercial litigator to plaintiff-side mass tort and abuse work—the stage where these cases are often decided.

Steven has tried multiple seven- and eight-figure cases to verdict, including a four-week jury trial on wrongful death claims arising from environmental asbestos exposure, a three-week breach of contract trial in the Circuit Court of Cook County, and an employment arbitration that produced a twenty-four-page reasoned decision granting his client a complete judgment. He has also secured rulings on novel theories of liability, including a first-of-its-kind summary judgment in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action, and a rare plaintiff-side summary judgment in which a federal court found a defendant liable for false and injurious statements about his client without the need for trial.

As General Counsel of GGH, Steven advises the firm on the legal and operational questions defining modern plaintiffs’ practice, including co-counsel and finance arrangements, ethics compliance, and the responsible use of artificial intelligence. He led the negotiation of the firm’s recent lease expansion, quadrupling GGH’s footprint to support its rapid national growth. His experience also extends into court-supervised work as counsel for receivers and trustees, including matters overseeing a municipality’s delivery of safe drinking water to its residents and the bankruptcy administration of one of the largest African American–owned publishing companies in the country.

A frequent media commentator on legal developments of public importance, Steven has also appeared on news programs to discuss non-disclosure agreements, sexual misconduct allegations against public figures, FTC actions on workplace non-competes, and pandemic-era business interruption issues. He is a regular speaker on trial advocacy, with recent panels for Financial Poise and the Decalogue Society on civil trial preparation, federal procedure, and the practical mechanics of trying a case.

Before joining GGH, Steven was a Litigation Partner at a Chicago-based boutique firm known for recruiting top legal talent, and before that, he spent several years at a nationally recognized trial firm of nearly 150 attorneys.

He earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington D.C., where he worked for the U.S. Department of Justice and served as a judicial extern to the Honorable Jeffrey Cole in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He earned his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Steven lives in Glenview, Illinois with his wife — also an attorney — and their two sons.