Commence the drumroll for the first Litigator of the Week of my tenure. It's been a couple of weeks since we last handed out bragging rights, so that drumroll is going to be dramatically prolonged as we acknowledge a bunch of worthy runners-up.

First up is a win that a Beveridge & Diamond team led by partners James Slaughter, Gary Smith, and associates Megan Morgan and Jacob Duginski scored for Chiquita Canyon Landfill, which filed suit in 2017 challenging the Conditional Use Permit imposed on one of California's largest landfills by Los Angeles County. In a 62-page decision issued on July 2, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Daniel Murphy struck or remanded 12 of the conditions imposed by the county, voiding estimated fees and costs of about $300 million dollars over the life of the landfill.  

A Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton team led by partners David Herrington, Nowell Bamberger and Joon Hyun Kim scored a trade secrets win for client Medytox at the U.S. International Trade Commission. An administrative law judge at the ITC sided with Medytox and Allergan, represented by counsel at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, finding on July 6 that South Korean bioengineering firm Daewoong Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd. misappropriated trade secrets belonging to Medytox and used them to develop a botulinum neurotoxin product known as Jeuveau and imported it into the U.S. The findings are subject to review by the full Commission.

Meanwhile, a Jenner & Block team including appellate and Supreme Court practice chair Ian Heath Gershengorn, partners Ishan Bhabha and Alison Stein, and associate Jonathan Langlinais convinced the Fourth Circuit to reverse a lower court decision and revive a copyright infringement suit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America and member recording companies. The district court below had found that websites FLVTO.com and 2conv.com, which allow users to rip music from YouTube videos without the permission of copyright holders, didn't have sufficient connection with the U.S. to establish personal jurisdiction. But the Fourth Circuit found that the sites' founder knew they were accessible to users in the U.S. who allegedly used them for music piracy. 

Also in the entertainment sphere, Kirkland & Ellis partners Sandra Goldstein and Stefan Atkinson scored a win at the Delaware Chancery Court for former officers and directors of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., including Co-Executive Chairmen Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch and Chief Executive Officer James Murdoch, in shareholder derivative litigation arising out the company's $73.1 billion merger with The Walt Disney Company. The team won a motion to dismiss the suit brought by a stockholder who brought claims of breach of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment related to the grant of retention restricted stock units to the Murdochs as part of the Disney deal. 

Quinn Emanuel partners Juan Morillo and David Cooper won a rare reversal of dismissal on forum non conveniens grounds at the 11th Circuit. The July 1 ruling will allow their clients, 39 plaintiffs who lost more than $1.1 billion in the collapse of Mexican oil services company Oceanografía, to pursue fraud claims back at the trial court against Citigroup, which provided credit facilities to the company.

In a long-running challenge to Arizona's capital punishment process, Sidley Austin partner Josh Anderson wrapped up six years of pro bono work for seven death-row prisoners in the state. Sidley's work resulted in a precedent-setting Ninth Circuit opinion extending the First Amendment's right of access to governmental proceedings to encompass sounds—a rebuke to the state's decision to turn off the audio feed from the execution chamber in the 2014 lethal injection of Joseph Wood. The firm's work also resulted in a settlement guaranteeing that Arizona won't carry out an execution using either midazolam or any other similar non-anesthetic drug in its class going forward.

Also from Sidley, partners Connie Trela and Steve Horowitz scored a win for clients Amgen and Immunex at the Federal Circuit, which found that the patents underlying the blockbuster $5 billion-a-year arthritis drug Enbrel were valid in the face of a challenge from competitor Sandoz. Amgen's stock price shot up more than 8% is the session following the July 1 opinion.

Shearman & Sterling partners Alan Goudiss and Mallory Brennan won a dismissal for client Altice USA, its board of directors and Altice Europe, in a securities class action pending in New York Supreme Court in Queens County. Justice Joseph Risi's June 26 decision was among the first in New York state courts to dismiss a federal Securities Act claim since the U.S. Supreme Court's Cyan, Inc. v. Beaver County Employees Retirement Fund decision clarified that such claims can be decided in state courts.

Also in front of Justice Risi in Queens, Skadden's Rob Fumerton got a Securities Act of 1933 case tossed in its entirety on motion to dismiss on July 7 for client RYB Education, a company focusing on early childhood education in China. The Skadden team notably convinced Risi to reverse an earlier decision of his and held that the heightened pleading standard of 3016(b) applies to Securities Act claims.

Steve Holley and Matthew Porpora of Sullivan & Cromwell helped client Fiat Chrysler Automobiles beat back a high-profile multi-billion RICO suit brought by General Motors. On July 8, U.S. District Judge Paul Borman in Detroit granted FCA's motion to dismiss rejecting GM's claims that it was harmed by an alleged bribery scheme involving payments that former FCA employees facilitated to United Auto Workers officials.

And finally, Lisa Blatt and the U.S. Supreme Court and appellate litigation team at Williams & Connolly upped their record to 3-0 at the High Court this term. With partner Sarah Harris leading the brief-writing, they won an 8-1 decision for client Booking.com, with the court holding that adding ".com" to a generic term can create a protectable trademark.