Our runners up for Litigator of the Week include Sullivan & Cromwell's Robert Giuffra Jr., Sharon Nelles and William Monahan for their win on behalf of Volkswagen in opt-out litigation arising from the "defeat device" emissions controversy. After an 11-day trial, a jury in San Francisco federal court awarded the plaintiffs a paltry $5,747 in compensatory damages. In the subsequent punitive damages phase, the plaintiffs asked for $582 million and got $100,000.

At Sidley Austin, Jennifer Haworth McCandless and Marinn Carlson won a significant victory for the Republic of Peru in an investment treaty arbitration. The country was sued by Spanish investor Lidercón S.L., which held a concession to provide motor vehicle inspection services in the capital of Lima. The ICSID tribunal dismissed all of the investor's claims (which the investor had valued at more than $120 million) and awarded $4 million in costs to Peru. 

Erise IP's Eric Buresh, Megan Redmond and Carrie Bader hit the jackpot for FanDuel, which was sued by CG Technology and Interactive Games for infringing 12 patents related to mobile gaming. Erise previously whittled down the case to one claim involving a single patent. On March 5, a federal judge in Delaware ruled the final patent was invalid under § 101 pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court's Alice ruling.

A shout-out also goes to Davis Wright Tremaine partner Peter Anderson for his win on behalf of Led Zeppelin and its music labels in the copyright fight over the song "Stairway to Heaven." While Anderson wasn't cleared to discuss the case on the record, the win was certainly noteworthy.