A Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher team led by Josh Krevitt, Wayne Barsky and Diana Feinstein lands this week’s first runner-up spot for fending off a preliminary injunction in a closely watched trade secret case in the nascent market for electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL, aircraft. On behalf of Silicon Valley startup Archer Aviation, the Gibson Dunn team beat back an injunction request brought by Wisk Aero, a competitor backed by Boeing and Google founder Larry Page, and its lawyers at Quinn Emanuel. The lawsuit and injunction bid came in the wake of Archer’s announcement earlier this year that it had landed a $1 billion order from United Airlines and planned to go public via a SPAC deal. Following a hearing last week, U.S. District Judge William Orrick III in San Francisco found Wisk Aero’s evidence “too uncertain and equivocal” to support an injunction.
Kathleen Hartnett, Andrew Barr, Julie Veroff, Elizabeth Reinhardt and Katelyn Kang of Cooley get runners-up honors for their work alongside Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of West Virginia in a lawsuit seeking to block West Virginia from enforcing a state law that bans transgender girls and women from participating in school sports. The team got a ruling that will allow 11-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson to compete on the girls’ track and cross-country teams at her school. “The right not to be discriminated against by the government belongs to all of us in equal measure,” wrote U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin of Charleston, in his preliminary injunction order.
