First up are Matthew Hellman, Lindsay Harrison and their team at Jenner & Block who got a precedential ruling from the Fourth Circuit reversing a decision certifying damages classes against client Marriott International Inc. in the massive data breach MDL facing the hotel chain. The appellate court held that Senior U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm of Greenbelt, Maryland erred by granting class certification before considering whether the plaintiffs had signed valid and enforceable class-action waivers. "The time to address a contractual class waiver is before, not after, a class is certified," Circuit Judge Pamela Harris wrote for the panel. The decision also reversed the lower court's decision certifying an issue class against Accenture LLP, an IT service provider that managed the hacked database at issue in the case. Accenture is represented by a Kirkland & Ellis team led by partners Craig Primis and Devin Anderson, who argued the case before the Fourth Circuit alongside Jenner's Hellman.

 Also getting a runner-up spot is the team at Wiggin and Dana led by Joe Casino and Nathan Denning whose work for the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut we featured in yesterday's column. U.S. District Mary McElroy in Providence, Rhode Island last week granted summary judgment to the museum agreeing with its reading of a 1989 agreement with storied naval architecture and shipbuilding company Sparkman & Stephens. The judge was persuaded that the agreement allows the museum to sell copies of S&S drawings it has been entrusted with to people using them to restore existing boats. The Wiggin and Dana team representing the museum also includes partner Frank Duffin and associates Hannah Blonshteyn, Sean Vallancourt and Evan Bianchi.

Runners-up honors also go to the team of bankruptcy, litigation and appellate lawyers at Proskauer Rose who got a precedential ruling from the Eighth Circuit this week opening the door for debtors to increase the value of their estates by selling the rights to pursue so-called "avoidance actions"—adversary proceedings seeking to unwind or "avoid" deals done by the debtor in the run-up to bankruptcy. Proskauer represents ARKK Food Company, which held an unsecured claim for about $7 million against Simply Essentials LLC, an Iowa chicken processing facility liquidating via Chapter 7. After the Proskauer team found what they thought were about $100 million in viable claims against company insiders, the client exchanged its unsecured claim for 85% ownership of the estate's avoidance actions and the right to prosecute them. "Whether the avoidance action is brought by the trustee or by a creditor, the action is brought for the benefit of the estate and therefore belongs to the estate," Circuit Judge Judge Michael Melloy wrote this week for the court, upholding the bankruptcy court's decision below. Daniel Desatnik and Max Greenberg led the firm's bankruptcy team on the matter, Todd Ohlms, Jordan Leader and Javier Sosa led the litigation team, and John Roberts and Shiloh Rainwater led the appellate team.