Our first runners-up this week are Garrard Beeney, Dustin Guzior and their team at Sullivan & Cromwell. After a two-week trial in Richmond, Virginia, a federal jury this week sided with their client Columbia University finding that NortonLifeLock Inc. infringed two cybersecurity patents developed by professors at Columbia’s Intrusion Detection Systems Laboratory. The jury further found Norton’s infringement of the patents for methods of malware detection was willful, opening the door for the $185 million damages award to potentially be tripled post-trial. Columbia’s team on the matter also included S&C special counsel Stephen Elliott and associates Alex Gross and Jessica Ecker and Spotts Fain shareholders Dana McDaniel and John Erbach.
Also getting a runners-up spot this week are Michael Rhodes, Michelle Doolin and their team at Cooley who represented members of the Kardashian-Jenner family in a high-profile $100 million defamation lawsuit brought by Angela White, more commonly known as Blac Chyna. White sued Kris Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian and Kylie Jenner claiming they falsely claimed she physically abused Robert Kardashian to E! executives to try to get them to cancel the planned second season of the “Rob & Chyna” reality show, which chronicled the couple’s relationship. The Cooley team, however, made the case that the show was canceled because the relationship had ended rather than any alleged actions by the family. After two days of deliberations, a state court jury in Los Angeles last week cleared all four defendants and awarded no damages. Cooley associates Christina Davis, Maximilian Sladek De La Cal and Carrie Lebel were also part of the trial team.
