Litigator of the (Past) Week Runners-Up and Shout-Outs
A Debevoise & Plimpton team led by Catherine Amirfar and Ina Popova secured the dismissal of a $950 million claim by French telecommunications company Orange against the Republic of Iraq concerning Orange’s stake in a Kurdistan mobile operator. Earlier this month, an ICSIC tribunal dismissed claims brought by Orange under France’s 2010 bilateral investment treaty with Iraq finding a lack of temporal jurisdiction. Orange was ordered to pay Iraq 90% of its legal fees and costs, or more than $10 million. The Debevoise team included counsel Carl Micarelli; associates Sarah Lee, Janine Godbehere, Federico Wynter and Liz White; case managers Mary Grace McEvoy and Tom McIntyre; as well as former counsel Carl Riehl and former associates Berglind Halldorsdottir Birkland and Mike Pizzi.
Teams from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, McGuireWoods, King & Spalding, McDermott Will & Schulte and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati fended off class certification in a high-stakes no-poach antitrust lawsuit against DaVita and its former CEO, Surgical Care Affiliates and its former CEO, Tenet Healthcare Corp. and United Surgical Partners International. In the wake of federal criminal, no-poach charges (which ultimately failed at trial in the DaVita case), plaintiffs brought private antitrust claims alleging the defendants conspired with other employers in the healthcare industry not to solicit each other’s senior employees. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Sunil Harjani in Chicago excluded key portions of the plaintiffs’ expert testimony on employee compensation and labor economics. Without that testimony, the judge held that the plaintiffs failed to establish that antitrust impact could be proven through common evidence. The Morgan Lewis team representing DaVita included Jack Dodds, Molly Lane, Clay Everett, Ken Kliebard, Nathan Shapiro, Jason Chrestionson, Staci Holthus and Al Hassani. The McGuireWoods team representing Surgical Care Affiliates included Amy Manning, Sarah Zielinski, Angelo Russo, Joshua Wade and Andrew Talbot. The King & Spalding team representing Tenet and USPI included Veronica Moyé, Lazar Raynal, Emily Newton, Matthew Dawson, Julianne Duran, Diana Liu, Lauren Smith, Connor Brewer and Jay Paolillo. The McDermott Will & Schulte team representing former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry included Jeffrey Stone, Daniel Campbell and Chelsea Mounayer. The Wilson Sonsini team representing former SCA CEO Andrew Hayek included Jeff Bank, Brian Smith, Karen Sharp and Jordanne Steiner.
A Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher team led by partners Christopher Joralemon, David Kusnetz and Brad Hubbard secured a ruling from an intermediate Texas appellate court for mining giant Vale S.A. in a $500 million lawsuit brought by Itabiriçu Nacional de Pesquisa Mineral over mineral rights in an area of Brazil known as the Polygonal. Itabiriçu sued appellant Vale S.A. in Nueces County, claiming that Vale wrongfully appropriated iron ore from the area and sold some of it in Texas. Earlier this month, the Thirteenth District Court of Appeals held that the trial court wrongfully denied Vale’s special appearance in the case and dismissed all claims against the company for lack of personal jurisdiction. The Gibson Dunn team included partner Sydney Scott, of counsel Benjamin Wilson and associates Michael Klurfeld, Jack DiSorbo, Arjun Ogale, Hayato Watanabe, John Ito, Warren Bloom, Jon Greenberg and Michelle Gery.
Shout-out to Jesse Panuccio of Boies Schiller Flexner, who secured a unanimous ruling from the Florida Supreme Court earlier this month that revived punitive-damages claims that Issac "Ike" Perlmutter, the former Chairman and CEO of Marvel Entertainment, and his wife Laura are pursuing against Harold Peerenboom, William Douberley and Federal Insurance Co. Palm Beach jurors already awarded Laura $50 million in compensatory damages in November after finding that Peerenboom defamed her and tried to obtain the couple’s DNA in attempts to link them to anonymous hate mail circulating in their upscale community. The state’s high court held in a 7-0 decision that plaintiffs only need to show a "reasonable evidentiary basis" to plead punitive damages at the trial court level. The ruling reversed a decision from Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal, which held that the Perlmutters needed to show "clear and convincing evidence" to pursue punitive damages in their case.
Shout-out to a Desmarais LLP trial team led by Tamir Packin and Kyle Petrie, who represented Harbour Antibodies BV and Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam in a patent infringement trial against Amgen and its subsidiary, Teneobio. Earlier this month, federal jurors in Delaware awarded $20.2 million in damages after finding that the defendants willfully infringed the asserted patent covering technology for developing human antibodies in rodents.
Shout-out to a team at Latham & Watkins led by Jeff Hammel that helped oil and gas client Venture Global fend off securities claims stemming from its $1.75 billion initial public offering in January 2025. Plaintiffs claimed that the company failed to adequately disclose production issues and cost overruns at its liquified natural gas and export projects in Louisiana. But after oral argument last month, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff last week granted the company’s motion to dismiss. Hammel argued the motion to dismiss. The Latham team included partners Jason Hegt and Corey Calabrese and associate Melange Gavin. The underwriter defendants were represented by Gibson Dunn.
Shout-out to an Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe team led by Rich Jacobsen, Marc Shapiro and Jennifer Keighley, which represented PayPal and its Honey Science Corp. subsidiary in a false advertising and invasion of privacy class action brought on behalf of 6.8 million residents of the United Kingdom. Plaintiffs claimed that the Honey Science browser extension failed to search for the best coupons or discount codes for users’ purchases as promised and that the defendants only applied codes obtained from affiliate networks, a website or Honey subscribers. But last week, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts in San Jose, California, dismissed the plaintiffs third amended complaint with prejudice. In particular, regarding the privacy claim, the judge noted that “the very purpose of the extension plaintiffs downloaded was to track their browsing.” The Orrick team included Sarah Ungeheuer and Shalani Maline.
Shout-out to Jared Newton of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Andrew Russell and Nathan Hoeschen of Shaw Keller, who secured a defense win for TVision in patent litigation brought by Nielsen claiming the covered automatic content recognition (ACR) technology. Earlier this month, federal jurors in Delaware found that Nielsen hadn’t proven that TVision infringed its patent related to creating digital signatures to identify audio content. The defense team included Quinn Emanuel associate Vanessa Blecher.
Shout-out to a Sidley Austin team led by Jack Yeh, Collin Wedel and Rara Kang, who secured a trial win for ASICS America Corp. against retailer Shoebacca Ltd. in a long-running dispute over the sale of “closeout” or “hash” footwear. Last week, after a nine-week trial, jurors in Orange County, California Superior Court awarded ASICS $6.1 million plus interest for unpaid invoices and rejected Shoebacca’s cross-claims for $44 million in lost-profit damages. The Sidley team included Lauren De Lilly, David Carpenter, Yolanda Garcia, Sebastien Wadier, Robert McMahon, Annabeth Reeb, Christine Karaoglanian and Lauren Emmerich.
Shout-out to teams led by Michael Gottlieb of Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Esra Hudson of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, who represent Blake Lively and related entities in litigation with her “It Ends With Us” co-star Justin Baldoni. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman held that Lively can recover legal fees and costs under California Civil Code Section 47.1—a state law designed to protect survivors of sexual harassment and discrimination from retaliatory lawsuits aimed at silencing them—related to her defense of Baldoni’s countersuit brought after she sued him in December 2024. The Manatt team includes partners Stephanie Roeser, Matthew Bruno, Sarah Moses and Naeun Rim and associates Katelyn Climaco and Lindsay DiMaggio. The Willkie team includes partners Kristin Bender and Aaron Nathan and associates Michaela Connolly and Melissa Taustine.
