Our first runners-up for Litigators of the Week are the lawyers at Covington & Burling who have been representing Ukraine pro bono at the International Court of Justice — the principal judicial organ of the United Nations — in relation to Russia’s claim of genocide as the pretext for its invasion of Ukraine. Russia did not participate in a hearing held on the matter at the ICJ earlier this month. This week the court, in a 13-2 vote, ordered the Russian Federation to immediately suspend its military operations in Ukraine. Although the court’s decisions are binding and constitute international law, it lacks enforcement powers. The Covington team representing Ukraine is led by partners Marney Cheek, Jonathan Gimblett and David Zionts, and it includes special counsel Clovis Trevino, special legal consultant Volodymyr Shkilevych, and associates Paris Aboro, Paul Strauch and Jill Warnock, as well as Professor Harold Hongju Koh of Yale Law School and Professor Jean-Marc Thouvenin of Université Paris Nanterre.
Baker & Hostetler partners John Siegal and Lauren Resnick get a runners-up nod for bringing home more than $50 million in judge and jury verdicts last week for business advisory firm FTI Consulting in a legal showdown with Berkeley Research Group. The suit stems from the 2016 move of three-dozen corporate finance professionals from FTI to BRG, including star bankruptcy restructuring consultant Robert Duffy. After a three-week trial in Suffolk County Superior Court, a Massachusetts state court jury sided with FTI on breach of contract claims against individual former employees and tortious interference against BRG to the tune of more than $21 million. Justice Kenneth Salinger, the judge overseeing the case, sided with FTI on its claims that BRG aided and abetted breaches of fiduciary duties and violated the state’s unfair business practices law. The judge awarded an additional $30 million in damages, including $18 million in punitives.
