Our first runners-up this week are lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner, Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check and Grant & Eisenhofer who scored a big win for shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a dispute with the Federal Housing Finance Agency that has its roots in FHFA’s bailout of those congressionally chartered companies during the subprime mortgage crisis. After a two-week trial and eight hours of deliberations, a federal jury in Washington, D.C. this week found that the FHFA improperly amended stock purchase agreements to sweep up the net worths of Fannie and Freddie and avoid paying shareholders dividends. Jurors awarded shareholders a total of $612.4 million in damages. The trial team for the plaintiffs included Kenya Davis and Hamish Hume of Boies Schiller, who presented opening and closing arguments respectively, as well as Robert “Rocky” Kravetz of Bernstein Litowitz and Lee Rudy of Kessler Topaz.
Mike Bonanno of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Ethan Glass of Cooley take home our other runner-up spot this week for securing a summary judgment win for the National Association of Realtors in a high-stakes antitrust case accusing the association of conspiring to prevent listings from real estate startup REX from showing up on Zillow. REX had sought upwards of $1 billion from NAR, but Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly in Seattle this week found that the optional NAR policy cited by REX didn’t support the “existence of an alleged agreement” with Zillow, and dismissed NAR from the case outright.
