The Last Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs of 2021
Our first runners-up at Proskauer Rose got the first trial win for Monsanto on the question of general causation in Roundup litigation.
December 17, 2021 at 07:30 AM
5 minute read
LitigatorsOur first runners-up this week are Bart Williams, Manuel Cachán, Lee Popkin and Shawn Ledingham who led a Proskauer Rose trial team that scored a defense verdict in California state court for Monsanto in a five-month trial where the plaintiff claimed the company's herbicide Roundup caused her non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Although the company had won one prior defense verdict based on a separate Roundup plaintiff's limited exposure to the product, last week's verdict from a San Bernardino County Superior Court jury was the first to side with Monsanto on the question of general causation.
Cooley partner Michael Tu and senior associate Peter Brody get a runner-up nod this week for winning an injunction in the Delaware Court of Chancery for Hologram Inc., a cellular platform for internet-of-things developers. Greg Caplan, an early advisor to the company, claimed he was entitled to a 10% equity stake in Hologram based on a 2013 email exchange with company founder Ben Forgan. But Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick this week sided with the reading of the exchange put forward by Forgan and company and barred Caplan from moving forward with a private arbitration filed against the company in Illinois. Michael Barlow of Abrams & Bayliss served as Delaware local counsel for Hologram.
Runners-up honors also go to a Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher team led by Allyson Ho and Andrew LeGrand for getting an important reversal at the Court of Appeals for Second Appellate District of Texas in Fort Worth for client Visa Inc. A Texas trial court previously found that Visa's program for securing its network and cardholder data was unlawful and unenforceable in a suit brought by Sally Beauty. The retailer, whose credit card network had been hacked two times in just more than a year's time, went to court to challenge a $14 million liquidated damages assessment passed from Visa to the bank that issued its cards to the company. The Texas appellate court last week found "recovery for damages paid to a third party is common" and all parties within Visa's network were on notice that damages could be recouped after significant breaches. The court of appeals also revived Visa's counterclaim for fraud. The Gibson Dunn team for Visa also included Elizabeth Kiernan, Joseph Barakat and Emily Jorgens.
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