First up among the runners-up are Deuel Ross, deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., Davin Rosborough, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Voting Rights Project, and Hogan Lovells partner Jessica Ellsworth. They led a team that scored a stunning 5-4 win at the U.S. Supreme Court last week in Allen v. Milligan. The court upheld a ruling finding Alabama’s 2021 redistricting map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act since it was drawn in a way that diluted the voting power of Black citizens in a suit initially filed in November 2021 on behalf of Greater Birmingham Ministries, the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP and several individuals. The ruling affirms a preliminary injunction forcing the state to draw a new map. The plaintiffs’ team also includes Janai Nelson, Samuel Spital, Leah Aden, Stuart Naifeh, Ashley Burrell, Kathryn Sadasivan, Brittany Carter and Tanner Lockhead of the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund Inc.; Julie Ebenstein, Dale Ho and David Cole of the ACLU; Hogan Lovells partners David Dunn, Shelita Stewart and Michael Turrill, counsel Jo-Ann Sagar and senior associates Johannah Walker and Blayne Thompson; LaTisha Gotell Faulks of the ACLU of Alabama; and Sidney Jackson and Nicki Lawsen of Wiggins Childs Pantazis Fisher & Goldfarb.
Also nabbing a runner-up spot are Adam Silverstein of Otterbourg and Eric Winston of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan who led a multi-firm effort to dismiss the Chapter 11 case filed by 3M subsidiary Aearo Technologies. Winston and Otterbourg’s Melanie Cyganowski previously won Litigator of the Week honors last year alongside Robert Pfister of KTBS Law after U.S. Chief Bankruptcy Judge Jeffrey Graham in Indianapolis declined to extend the automatic stay on litigation in Aearo’s bankruptcy to the thousands of lawsuits targeting 3M with claims related to combat earplugs. Last week the judge dismissed the bankruptcy case altogether finding there was no “valid reorganization purpose” for the filing. “From the very beginning of these cases, Aearo made clear that the filings were not prompted by concerns over financial distress or impending insolvency but were initiated to manage the MDL process, a process that Aearo insisted was ‘broken,’” the judge wrote. ”These cases were and are a litigation management tactic and not a rehabilitative effort.” The team representing the Official Committee of Combat Arms Earplug Claimants and more than 200,000 plaintiffs also includes Jennifer Feeney, Pauline McTernan and Michael Maizel of Otterbourg, as well as Adam Wolfson and Patti Tomasco of Quinn Emanuel.
