First up is an appellate team led by Peter Stris of Stris & Maher, who got an important win this week for ERISA plaintiffs at the Second Circuit. A divided panel of the court held that an arbitration provision in the Strategic Financial Solutions LLC stock plan impermissibly limited a plan participant from pursuing “plan-wide remedies explicitly authorized by ERISA”—and was therefore unenforceable. Stris, who argued the case at the Second Circuit, was joined in the briefing by Rachana Pathak, Douglas Geyser, John Stokes and Tillman Breckenridge from Stris & Maher and Gregory Porter and Ryan Jenny of Bailey & Glasser.

A team at Cooley brought home a $34 million verdict for client Sight Sciences Inc. in a patent showdown over eye implants used to treat certain forms of glaucoma. After five-day jury trial in Delaware federal court, jurors last week found that the Hydrus Microstent made by Alcon Inc. infringed three Sight Sciences patents and awarded lost profits of $5.5 million and a reasonable royalty of $28.5 million. The jury also found that Alcon’s infringement was willful. The Cooley trial team included Michelle Rhyu, Orion Armon, Jeff Karr, Eamonn Gardner, Joe Van Tassel, Lauren Strosnick, Alissa Wood, Bonnie Fletcher Price, Juan Pablo Gonzalez, Dustin Knight and Angela Madrigal. Sight Sciences had local counsel from Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, including partners Melanie Sharp and Jim Higgins, and associates Taylor Hallowell and Stephanie Vangellow.