Runners up for Litigator of the Week include a team of attorneys from Foley Hoag for their win on behalf of Greece in a fight over the ownership of an 8th century B.C. bronze horse sculpture.

Foley Hoag's Andrew Schwartz and Constantinos Salonidis along with Leila Amineddoleh of Amineddoleh & Associates LLC convinced the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to reverse the district court decision in a fight with Sotheby's over the sculpture. Greece's Ministry of Culture and Sports informed Sotheby's that according to Greece's patrimony laws, the sculpture is the property of the Greek state, appears to have been illegally removed from Greek territory, and should be returned to Greece rather than sold at auction. 

Sotheby's sued Greece in the Southern District of New York seeking declaratory relief on the disputed issue of ownership. The Second Circuit held that the court lacked jurisdiction under Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to hear the case.

Greece's legal team also included Janis Brennan and Mark Finsterwald of Foley Hoag.

Kudos also to a team of Husch Blackwell lawyers led by partner Jeffrey Neeley for their win before the International Trade Commission. They represented TricorBraun in a countervailing duties case filed by a coalition of U.S. glassware companies over imported glass wine bottles and other glass containers. 

The ITC found that the importation of Chinese-made bottles does not injure or threaten U.S. producers—a finding that will prevent countervailing duties placed last month on imported glassware by the U.S. Department of Commerce from taking effect.

The Husch Blackwell team also included Stephen Brophy, Chris Hamlin, Nithya Nagarajan, Julia Banegas, Camron Greer and Turner Kim.

Another notable win involved AbbVie's Humira—the best-selling drug in the world—in an antitrust "reverse-payment" case.

Kirkland & Ellis partners James Hurst, Diana Watral, and Damon Andrews for AbbVie and an O'Melveny & Myers team—partners Ian Simmons and Ben Bradshaw, counsel Stephen McIntyre, associates Kurt Brown, Patrick Jones and Brian Quinn for Samsung Bioepis—won dismissal of a putative class action in Chicago federal court. The plaintiffs alleged Bioepis and other pharmaceutical companies agreed to delay the launch of biosimilar versions of Humira, allowing AbbVie to artificially maintain its monopoly.

Alas, to be Litigators of the Week, you have to be able to discuss your win on the record, and that didn't seem to be possible here.

Belatedly, here are also the runners up from last week's contest:

Peter Stris of Stris & Maher drove over Volkswagen at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Reversing U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, the appellate panel ruled that the Clean Air Act does not preempt state and local laws that seek to regulate the same misconduct.

The decision (which VW has pledged to appeal) opens the company to claims by state and local governments stemming from the diesel emissions scandal. "We acknowledge that our conclusion . . . may result in the imposition of unexpected (and enormous) liability on Volkswagen," the panel held.

Litigators from Goodwin Procter led by Robby Frederickson scored for Dr. Reddy's Laboratories in a patent fight with Indivior PLC over Suboxone Sublingual Film, a prescription medicine used to treat adults who are addicted to opioid drugs.

In an inter partes review, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board found the original application did not contain written description support for nearly all of the claims in Individor's patent. The Goodwin team also included Elaine Blais, Ira Levy, Alex Valenti, Alex Lu, Molly Grammel, Christine Armellino and Nicole Corey.