Our runners up for Litigator of the Week include Irell & Manella's Jason Sheasby and Lisa Glasser, who led a team in scoring a $102 million patent infringement jury verdict for USAA on Jan. 10 against Wells Fargo Bank in the Eastern District of Texas.

At issue: the "auto capture" process, which simplifies check deposits made with mobile devices. The $102 million award follows a $200 million win by the team in November for USAA in another EDTX patent suit against Wells Fargo.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Joshua Lipshutz convinced a Los Angeles Superior Court judge that Assembly Bill 5, California's brand-new independent contractor classification test, is invalid as applied to motor carriers because it's preempted by federal law.

It's a major win for the trucking industry, which is now spared from completely revamping its business models in response to the new law.

At Hogan Lovells, Michelle Kisloff, Des Hogan, Allison Holt Ryan, Vassi Iliadis, and Andrew Bank racked up big wins for Uber in an MDL comprising more than two dozen putative, nationwide class actions. The suits stem from a 2016 data security breach where personal information of millions of Uber riders and drivers globally was accessed by a hacker.

On Jan. 8, U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez in the Central District of California issued a pair of decisions granting Uber's motions to compel arbitration for both riders and drivers. The court rejected claims by plaintiffs that riders did not consent to arbitration when they signed up for the Uber app, and also held that the drivers were not exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act.

It wasn't Uber's only win this week. Covington & Burling's Mark Gimbel, C. William Phillips and Bryant Pulsipher beat back a shareholder derivative action against the company in Delaware. Plaintiffs sought more than $1 billion in damages from Uber directors based on the company's acquisition of self-driving car startup Ottomotto and the resulting litigation with Google over trade secrets.

On January 13, the Delaware Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Chancery Court's ruling, concluding that a majority of the board was sufficiently disinterested and independent to evaluate the claims at issue objectively.

Willkie Farr & Gallagher's Tariq Mundiya also came out on top at the Delaware Supreme Court, scoring a win on behalf of two Black Rock investment funds in a suit by shareholder Saba Capital Master Fund. 

Saba attempted to present its slate of dissident trustee nominees for election at the funds' annual meetings. Reversing the Court of Chancery, the Delaware high court held that Saba missed a key deadline. "Encouraging such after-the-fact factual inquiries into missed deadlines could potentially frustrate the purpose of advance notice bylaws," the court ruled.

Derek Shaffer, Kathleen Sullivan and Bob Raskopf of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan prevailed before the Connecticut Supreme Court on behalf of Gartner, which publishes reviews of technology vendors. NetScout was unhappy with how Gartner ranked it within the relevant market. 

The Connecticut high court held that such reviews and ratings are, as a rule, protected opinions that cannot give rise to defamation suits.

Sidley Austin's Paul Veith and Rob Hochman prevailed for Kemper Corporate Services, Inc. before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which affirmed a $141.7 million arbitration award.

Kemper sued Computer Sciences Corp. after a software implementation project went bad. CSC attempted to convince the court that the arbitrator had exceeded his power by awarding consequential damages (which were precluded by the contract), but the Fifth Circuit held that that the arbitrator properly exercised his right to determine whether the damages Kemper sought were direct or consequential.