Good morning! I'm Lit Daily editor Jenna Greene, back from a delightful summer vacation in Europe. Most of the time, I was on a cruise in the Mediterranean with my family. (Favorite place: Montenegro, a tiny gem of a country, which for the record gave no signs of readying to start World War III. ) The thing about a cruise is, it's one of the few places left where you're more or less forced to unplug. My son turned his phone on at sea for literally five minutes and racked up more than $100 in charges from inadvertently loading a bunch of Facebook Messenger items with data-intensive emojis, gifs and photos. Suffice to say, I didn't check my work email on board, and took just a cursory look once or twice at cafes on shore with wifi. This has advantages—check out this recent story from my colleagues at Law.com: Why You Should Take a Vacation From Your Phone. But it also meant I returned to work on Tuesday to find 1,283 new messages in my inbox. Some are instant deletes—“2018 VAWA Reauthorization Bill”; “US Telecom Participates in DHS Cybersecurity Summit”; “CFTC Chairman Giancarlo Supports American Crop Insurance”; “Lex Mundi Strengthens its Service Platform in Asia-Pacific.” But there was also plenty of news I was sorry to have missed. For example, Litigator of the Week was on hiatus while I was away—but if we'd named a champ last week, Selendy & Gay's Sean Baldwin would have been tough to beat. As firm founder Philippe Selendy wrote in an email to me, Baldwin notched the first nine-figure recovery for Selendy & Gay, a recent spin-off from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Baldwin led the way in securing an $850 million settlement for U.S. Bank and three trusts from UBS Real Estate Securities, represented by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. The deal followed a 13-day trial in 2016 in the Southern District of New York and extensive post-trial proceedings. According to Selendy, it was the first residential mortgage-backed securities trustee putback action to be tried—and is the largest recovery ever achieved in such a case. Another contender: Former Solicitor General and Munger, Tolles & Olson partner Don Verrilli, along with partners Ginger Anders and Chad Golder, who represented the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico. They won the dismissal of a challenge brought by hedge fund Aurelius Investment—represented by another former SG, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Ted Olson—alleging that the board was appointed in violation of the U.S. Constitution's Appointments Clause. Oral argument featured two additional former SGs, Walter Dellinger and Ian Gershengorn, (seriously, this case must set some kind of record for former SGs) and one ex-head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Chuck Cooper. The decision means the current board can continue its work trying to stabilize Puerto Rico's financial condition and facilitate its economic recovery. We skipped the July 20 Litigator of the Week as well. As a result, we couldn't consider a nomination from White & Case for partner Eric Grannon, who scored an unusual victory for Par Pharmaceutical Companies, Inc. and Paddock Holdings, LLC. On July 16, Grannon convinced a federal judge in Georgia to deny class cert for direct purchaser plaintiffs in MDL litigation over the testosterone replacement drug AndroGel. According to the firm, it's only the second time in 20 years that a putative class of direct purchasers has been denied class certification in a reverse payment case. “This decision signals a significant vulnerability for such hoped-for class actions in other cases going forward as well as a threat to the business model of the pharmaceutical antitrust plaintiffs' bar for direct purchasers,” the firm wrote. Another pitch that caught my eye came from Quinn Emanuel. “In the first trial and first jury verdict for Quinn Emanuel's Boston office, the firm won total victory over Latham & Watkins in one of the speediest intellectual property trials on record,” wrote the firm's outside PR rep, Eric Herman. QE partner Steve Cherny led the winning team representing Markforged Inc., which was unsuccessfully sued by Desktop Metal Inc. for patent infringement. And here's a pitch that would surely have merited a Shout-Out: Skadden partner Anthony Dreyer was lead counsel in two appellate and two amicus wins in the last two weeks of July. One of the cases I wrote about before : a suit by 168 pro golf caddies who protested that they're wrongly forced to wear bibs with corporate logos during tournaments that turn them into “human billboards.” The appellate panel agreed with the lower court, ruling that the caddies had consented to wear the bibs and that they did not do so under economic duress. (The panel also noted that if the caddies just wore khaki pants and blue polo shirts without the bibs, they “would be indistinguishable from many golf fans on the course.”) Dreyer also prevailed before the D.C. Circuit on behalf of Youku.com, which was sued for copyright infringement. There were also some big-time lateral moves. Dechert added an 18-attorney products liability team from Quinn Emanuel—three partners, nine counsel and six associates. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius snagged seven IP litigation partners from McDermott, Will & Emery. (“This team of seasoned trial lawyers has experience litigating patent disputes for companies in the life sciences industry, deepening an already strong and broad industry focus for Morgan Lewis,” the firm said.) And Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld grabbed a five-partner class action litigation team from Drinker Biddle & Reath. (“This experienced group of litigators will expand the firm's national class actions and complex commercial litigation capabilities in key areas.”) Looking ahead, here's a suit against Facebook to keep an eye on. “Moving at light speed, aggressive litigation firm Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht LLP launches securities fraud class action in wake of largest stock drop in history,” is how name partner John Pierce, another Quinn Emanuel alum, put it in an email. (Hyperbole? What hyperbole?). |

What I'm Reading

Arnold & Porter Resolves $214M Malpractice Suit by Billionaire Rennert The parties formally moved to dismiss the case from New York state court. Paul Manafort Misplaced Trust in Rick Gates, Defense Attorneys Say In opening statements, prosecutor Uzo Asonye described Manafort, who has a law degree from Georgetown University, as “shrewd” in his work, deceiving bookkeepers, tax preparers and the Internal Revenue Service. FTC Mum on Data Privacy Next Steps After Appeals Court Loss The FTC elected not to ask the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to review its ruling in the LabMD case. Does that mean the agency is pulling back from its role as data privacy cop? Lessons From Estée Lauder's Parental Leave Settlement With EEOC The case highlighted broader questions about whether men should be equally considered for parental leave. Verrilli Tops Clement as DC Circuit Rejects Christmas Ads on City Buses The panel originally included Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who participated in arguments in March but not the decision because of his subsequent nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Federal Judge Grants Temporary Restraining Order on 3-D Printed Guns Good.