Michael Avenatti is famous these days as Stormy Daniels' lawyer, but we at Lit Daily also know him as the lawyer who won a gigantic punitive damages award last year.

Avenatti went toe-to-toe with a top-notch team from King & Spalding in a California class action over “leaky” surgical gowns by Kimberly-Clark and spin-off Halyard Health. He walked away with a verdict of $3.9 million in compensatory damages and a stunning $450 million in punitive damages.

Almost everyone surely knew the award wasn't going to stand—how can you justify punitive damages that are 115 times greater than economic ones, especially when there was no evidence of any physical injury? But it's a reminder of how brutally effective Avenatti can be in front of a jury.

Sure enough, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of California on March 30 whacked the award down to size, setting punitive damages at $20.7 million.

Kimberly-Clark was accused of selling surgical gowns that were supposed to be impermeable, providing the highest level of protection to medical personnel. If during surgery a doctor or nurse accidentally came into contact with a patient's blood, the “MicroCool” gowns were supposed to provide a leak-proof barrier that would protect them from exposure to contagious diseases like HIV or hepatitis.

The problem, as a former executive told “60 Minutes” in a report on the case in 2016, is that the gowns “would leak. When we pressure tested them, especially in the seams… Kimberly-Clark knew that if they told customers, it would cost us a lot of business.”

The plaintiffs argued that the companies “had known since 2012 that the gowns were defective, failed industry tests, and did not meet relevant standards, thus placing healthcare professionals and patients at considerable risk for infection, serious bodily harm and death.”

Clearly Avenatti's arguments resonated with the jury. As he put it in post-trial court papers, the punitive damages were “a clear message that they found defendants' conduct to be extremely despicable and reprehensible.”

But that doesn't mean the award passes muster under the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in State Farm Mutual Auto. Ins. Co. v. Campbell, which held that there is presumptive preference for single-digit ratios between punitive and compensatory damages.

Gee gave Avenatti a choice: accept the lower award, or try the case a second time on the issue of the amount of punitive damages.

On Monday, Avenatti indicated he would accept the reduced sum. “[T]he court's order is extremely favorable to plaintiff's position and results in millions of dollars in punitive damages,” he wrote.

Nor did he see any point in re-trying the case. The court already indicated it would only support a 1 to 5 ratio between compensatory and punitive damages, and the plaintiffs were awarded all the compensatory damages they claimed.

“There is no relevant evidentiary dispute relating to punitive damages that could possibly change the court's analysis or outcome if the same evidence were permitted in a second trial,” he wrote.

But Avenatti asked the judge simply to reduce the damages, and not require him to accept her remittitur.

“[T]here would be a significant risk that plaintiff's acceptance of the remittitur would result in a waiver of its right to appeal the court's reduction of the punitive damages award,” he wrote. “It would also be unduly prejudicial to plaintiff because all indications are that defendants will be pursuing their own appeal of the court's order and forthcoming judgment.”

Why yes. Both Kimberly Clark and Halyard added new lawyers for post-trial motions—ones with serious juice for an appeal.

Halyard is now represented by former Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. and Daniel Collins of Munger, Tolles & Olson. Under Gee's reduced damages, the company's punitives drop from $100 million to $1.3 million.

If that was it, they might just write a check. But when Halyard was spun off from Kimberly-Clark in 2014, it agreed to indemnify Kimberly-Clark for all liability related to the gowns.

Kimberly Clark, which got its share of punitive damages reduced from $350 million to $19.4 million, is represented by Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., Julian W. Poon and Theane Evangelis of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

“We are pleased that the district court has eliminated 95 percent of the unconstitutional punitive damage award and that plaintiff has now effectively accepted that reduction,” Boutrous said in an email. “We are in a strong position, with many powerful arguments for appeal of the remainder of the verdict and a binding agreement that requires Halyard to indemnify Kimberly Clark for any damages relating to this matter.”

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How Williams & Connolly Helped the Feds Bust Backpage.com

In building their case against Backpage.com for sex trafficking, federal law enforcers got an assist from Williams & Connolly and its client Co-Star Group Inc.

Firm lawyers uncovered key evidence implicating Backpage while working on an unrelated case—an ongoing copyright fight over commercial real estate information between CoStar and now-bankrupt Xceligent Inc.

As I wrote in December, Williams & Connolly lawyers led by Nicholas Boyle and C. Bryan Wilson unleashed a multi-front litigation blitz against Xceligent, which is owned by London-based Daily Mail and General Trust.

Xceligent was allegedly using a company in the Philippines called Avion to copy CoStar's photos and proprietary data values, incorporating the stolen intellectual property into its own, lower-priced rival products.

The W&C investigators dove deep into Avion, and discovered Xceligent wasn't Avion's only client. They realized Backpage was using Avion as well, and in a way that seemed obviously troubling.

“Upon finding these problematic materials in the hands of Backpage's Philippines agent, CoStar initiated contact with federal law enforcement and provided data assistance to the investigation of Backpage,” Jaye Campbell, CoStar's head of litigation, said in an email. “We are gratified that the federal government is taking strong steps to stop Backpage from profiting from the exploitation of children.”

In the indictment against Backpage, federal agents describe the actions of “Company B” in the Philippines, which appears to be Avion.

“Company B's employees were instructed to (1) visit rival prostitution websites in other countries (2) obtain the email addresses of prostitutes who were posting ads on those websites (often by falsely posing as prospective customers) (3) use the information from the other website to create a competing prostitution ad on Backpage (a process referred to internally as 'preboarding') and then (4) transmit the new ad to the prostitute, often using the previously-harvested email account information, in an attempt to persuade the prostitute to become a Backpage customer,” the indictment states.

Williams & Connolly isn't the only elite litigation shop to give the feds a hand in the Backpage case. Boies Schiller Flexner (and co-counsel Legal Momentum) also uncovered evidence in a pro bono suit that Backpage advertisers are “coached to use code words such as 'high schl' and 'brly Legal' rather than words that would explicitly state that a child being trafficked is under 18.”

Dickstein Shapiro collapsed more than two years ago, and a former California partner at the firm, Clyde Hettrick, has been dead nearly five years. But Hettrick's time at Dickstein is still generating fresh litigation.

The plaintiffs lawyers are getting nasty about money and clients.

“Every black prospective juror in Defendant Johnny Lee Gates's case was labeled with an 'N' to identify their race…. Subsequently every qualified black juror was struck by the prosecution.”

See who got the nod.

This makes perfect sense—if your goal is have as little an impact as possible.

WilmerHale partner Reginald Brown, a veteran congressional investigations lawyer in Washington, reportedly led Zuckerberg's hearing prep.

“You don't summon a housekeeper into your room when you're naked …What about putting on some clothes? What about acting like a human being?”