Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs
Desmarais LLP founding partner John Desmarais brought home a $272.5 million damages verdict for client Ravgen in a patent case against medical testing giant Labcorp related to non-invasive prenatal genetic testing.
September 30, 2022 at 07:25 AM
7 minute read
Quick TakesOur first runner-up this week is John Desmarais, the founding partner of Desmarais LLP, who last week landed a $272.5 million patent infringement verdict for client Ravgen against medical testing giant Labcorp related to non-invasive prenatal genetic testing technology. That tally, which is what Desmarais asked the Waco, Texas, jury for in his closing argument, amounts to a royalty rate of $100 per test for the 2.7 million tests Labcorp sold that use mother's blood to detect conditions such as Down syndrome as early as nine into pregnancy. "The world before this patent was very inhospitable to mothers and prenatal care," Desmarais said during closing. "You had three choices: You stick a big needle in your belly and do amniocentesis, almost hit the baby, cause a miscarriage; you get your placenta biopsied, possibly causing a miscarriage; or you get serum screening, which often gave you false positives. Think about that. There's no dispute about that. That was the world before this invention." The jury also found that Labcorp willfully infringed. The trial team also included firm partner Kerri-Ann Limbeek, and associates Benjamin Luehrs, Kyle Petrie, Joze Welsh, Jun Tong and Deborah Mariottini.
You might remember antitrust litigators at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Latham & Watkins picked up LOTW honors earlier this month by beating back the Federal Trade Commission's challenge to Illumina's $8 billion acquisition of cancer blood-test developer GRAIL, with Cravath representing the acquirer and Latham the target. This past week, the roles were reversed, with Latham representing acquirer U.S. Sugar and Cravath representing target Imperial Sugar as the firms once again beat back yet another antitrust challenge—this time brought by the DOJ's Antitrust Division—challenging the $315 million sugar tie-up announced in November. After a four-day bench trial in April, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika in Delaware last week found that the government failed to establish both a relevant product and geographic market. "In the end, the court finds it more than curious that the government is purportedly concerned about anticompetitive harm and increased prices in an industry where the government itself keeps the prices high and, in many ways, controls the competition," the judge wrote. The Latham team representing U.S. Sugar included partners Lawrence Buterman, Christopher Yates, Amanda Reeves, Jennifer Giordano, Lindsey Champlin and Kelly Fayne, counsel Elyse Greenwald, and associates Molly Barron, David Johnson, Chris Brown, Matthew Piehl, Jesse Vella, Graham Haviland, Leah Wisser, Christine Greeley and Saffa Khan. The Cravath team representing Imperial Sugar was led by partners Christine Varney, Timothy Cameron, Daniel Zach, Peter Barbur and David Marriott.
Andrew Perito and his team at Durie Tangri land a runner-up spot for winning summary judgment for Xerox in a case where Midwest Athletics and Sports Alliance initially brought infringement claims under 20 patents related to printer technology. Chief U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Wolford in Rochester, New York, this week granted summary judgment of invalidity or non-infringement on each of the 12 claims remaining in the case in a whopping 102-page opinion disposing of a total of six summary judgment motions and motions to strike filed by the parties. The Durie Tangri team representing Xerox also included Daralyn Durie, Eric Wiener, Vera Ranieri, Bethany Bengfort and Andrew Jones.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Law Firms Mentioned
Trending Stories
- 1First Lawsuit Filed Alleging Contraceptive Depo-Provera Caused Brain Tumor
- 2BD Settles Thousands of Bard Hernia Mesh Lawsuits
- 3The Law Firm Disrupted: For Big Law Names, Shorter is Sweeter
- 4The Growing Tension—And Opportunity—in Big Law Nonequity Tiers
- 5The 'Biden Effect' on Senior Attorneys: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Featured Firms
Law Offices of Gary Martin Hays & Associates, P.C.
(470) 294-1674
Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone
(857) 444-6468
Smith & Hassler
(713) 739-1250