Our runners up for Litigator of the Week include McKool Smith chairman Mike McKool, who secured an $85 million patent verdict on behalf of WiLAN against Apple—the full amount that the company requested. A jury in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California found Apple infringed two of WiLAN's patents, which cover voice over LTE wireless communication technology used in Apple's iPhone 6 and 7.

The team also included firm principals Scott Cole, Brett E. Cooper, Warren Lipschitz, Ashley N. Moore, Jonathan Yim, and Seth Hasenour. 

Roger Burlingame from Dechert got a great outcome for London-based trader Navinder Singh Sarao, who initially faced charges carrying a maximum penalty of 380 years behind bars. The Justice Department prosecuted Sarao for "spoofing" the market—an alleged factor in the 2010 "flash crash," when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 600 points in five minutes.

Sarao, who is autistic and has been described by media reports as a savant, was trading from his parents' home in suburban London. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall in Chicago sentenced him to time served (he originally spent four months in a UK prison in 2015 prior to his release on bail) and one year of home confinement.

A team from Foley Hoag represented The Republic of The Gambia in a case against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice regarding the genocide against the Rohingya people. The court ordered Myanmar to "take all measures within its power" to protect the ethnic Rohingya minority.

Why did The Gambia, which has long been a leader in human rights but is thousands of miles from Myanmar and has no special connection to the Rohingya, bring the case under the Convention on Genocide? Abubacarr Tambadou, the country's justice minister, told the Washington Post, "Well, why not The Gambia? … We are doing this in the name of humanity."

The Foley Hoag team includes partners Paul Reichler, Larry Martin, Andrew Loewenstein and Tafadzwa Pasipanodya.

At Sullivan & Cromwell, partners Steve Holley and Adam Paris prevailed on behalf of Lion Capital in a multidistrict litigation involving an alleged conspiracy among Bumble Bee Foods LLC, Chicken of the Sea and Starkist to fix the price of packaged tuna products. 

The plaintiffs claimed Lion was a direct participant, but U.S. District Judge Janis L. Sammartino of the Southern District of California granted a motion to dismiss with prejudice, bringing to a close three years of litigation.

At Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, labor and employment partner Greg Knopp (who also heads the firm's Los Angeles office) led a team in shutting down a class action against Starbucks in the Central District of California.

The plaintiff, Douglas Troester, alleged that Starbucks failed to pay for tasks such as setting the alarm and locking the door at the end of closing shifts. He sought unpaid wages and steep statutory penalties on behalf of a putative class of thousands of Starbucks hourly employees across California for a period spanning eight years. On remand, the district court denied class cert and granted partial summary judgment to Starbucks, leaving the name plaintiff with only his individual claim.

Working pro bono, Matthew Carter of Winston & Strawn convinced the Illinois Supreme Court to order a new trial for Shadwick King. 

King was convicted of murdering his wife, but the state high court found the trial court judge erred by allowing improper expert testimony. (See my story here.)