Litigator of the Week Runner-Ups and Shout-Outs
Accolades | February 21, 2025
The AmLaw Litigation Daily
First up this week is a Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher team led by Theane Evangelis and Blaine Evanson, who previously landed Runners-Up honors in November for knocking out a $198 million punitive damages award against UPS in a retaliation and wrongful termination suit brought by a Black delivery driver in Yakima, Washington. Last week U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice in Spokane went a step further and tossed the $39.6 million compensatory damages award in the case and ordered a new trial. Rice found the plaintiff’s counsel “unfairly influenced the jury’s award” by repeatedly violating a ruling excluding the time-barred contents of a 2018 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint.
The Gibson Dunn team also included Madeleine McKenna, Josh Zuckerman and Min soo Kim, with co-counsel from the trial team at Ogletree Deakins including Elizabeth Falcone, Michael Mitchell and Florence Mao.
Meanwhile, fresh off Litigator of the Week honors in January for landing a directed verdict win for Cisco Systems Inc. in a patent trial in Waco, Texas, Gibson Dunn’s Brian Rosenthal paired with partner Kate Dominguez for yet another West Texas trial win for Cisco. Last week jurors sided with Cisco in a case brought on behalf of Brazos Licensing and Development accusing Cisco’s networking routers of infringing a patent related to the use of diameter dictionaries. The verdict appears to be the first defense win under Section 273, which allows a defendant to base a noninfringement defense on its prior commercial use of the claimed invention.
The Gibson Dunn team included Allen Kathir, Emily Whitcher, Ryan Jin and Claire Santiago.
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Reprinted with permission from the February 21, 2025 edition of “The AmLaw Litigation Daily” © 2025 ALM Global Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-256-2472 or [email protected].