Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout-Outs
Accolades | April 17, 2026
The AmLaw Litigation Daily
Shout-out to a Gibson Dunn team led by Christopher Joralemon and David Kusnetz, who have been representing mining giant Vale S.A. in securities litigation stemming from the 2019 collapse of the tailings dam at the Brumadinho iron mine in southeastern Brazil, which killed hundreds and led to extensive environmental damage. U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee in Brooklyn this week excluded the plaintiffs’ expert report on damages, finding it failed to distinguish the investment losses caused by Vale’s alleged misrepresentations about the risk of a dam collapse from those caused by the collapse itself. The Gibson Dunn team includes Chase Weidner, Andrew Freire, Nicholas Canelos, Jabari Julien, Nathalie Gunasekera, Amanda Bello, Amir Heidari, Simone Rivera and Carolyn Ye.
Shout-out to a team at DLA Piper that represented the firm in a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit filed by a former associate. After a six-day trial, federal jurors in Manhattan this week found that plaintiff Anisha Mehta failed to prove that the firm was liable for discrimination under the New York City Human Rights Law. Jurors further found the firm was not liable for interfering with Mehta’s Family and Medical Leave Act rights and had not committed retaliation in response to her leave request. The trial team was led by DLA Piper partners Brett Ingerman, Jessica Masella and Jon Kinney, with support from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Molly Senger.
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