Our runners up  for Litigator of the Week include Faith Gay and Jennifer Selendy of Selendy & Gay for their win on behalf of McKinsey & Co. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in the Southern District of New York dismissed with prejudice four RICO claims by Jay Alix–the founder, 35% owner, and a director of bankruptcy consultants AlixPartners LLP against McKinsey.

The judge also dismissed seven current and former McKinsey employees who had been named as defendants from the case with prejudice, holding that the facts alleged were not sufficient to satisfy RICO's proximate-cause standard.

After a 22-year fight, Pepper Hamilton partner Bob Hertzberg and his team secured $172 million from Dow Silicones Corp.–formerly Dow Corning Corp. Hertzberg represented claimants asserting the right to default interest under their respective loan agreements during Dow's chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. The long-running case, which settled just before it was set to go to trial, included numerous appeals by various parties to the Sixth Circuit. 

By contrast, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partners Adam Offenhartz and Aric Wu scored a lightning-fast win for Barnes & Noble Education and its board of directors in the Delaware Chancery Court. After Barnes & Noble Education rejected investment fund Bay Capital's unsolicited efforts to purchase all of its outstanding equity, Bay Capital then attempted to nominate a dissident slate of director candidates for the upcoming annual meeting.  

With just two weeks allotted for discovery and six days for briefing, Offenhartz and Wu convinced the court that Bay Capital missed the nomination deadline by a day. Bonus: The court invited the defendants to seek recovery of their legal fees.

At Bracewell, partner Stephen Crain successfully defended Pier 1 Imports in a securities fraud suit. On appeal before the Fifth Circuit, Crain convinced the court that the plaintiff's essential allegation—knowledge of high inventory must mean knowledge of significant markdown risk—was both inconsistent with what Pier 1 told the market and, in any event, was not enough to prevail on appeal.

Latham & Watkins partners Matthew Brill and Andrew Prins led a team that came through for Charter Communications/ Time Warner Cable, beating back a would-be Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action in the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs sought to represent people who allegedly received calls that were intended for Charter's customers but instead reached non-customers because the customers' numbers had been re-assigned. The potential damages were huge—150 million calls, with statutory damages of $500 per call.

Latham defeated class certification, convincing the court that the plaintiffs' proposed methodology could not reliably identify such calls.