Our first runner-up this week is a team at Davis Wright Tremaine that scored a major appellate reversal for short-seller Muddy Waters. A trial court in California had previously found that Muddy Waters-authored reports–reports that raised allegations that a large Chinese aluminum company had fraudulently inflated sales figures–amounted to "commercial speech" and fell outside the protections of the state's anti-SLAPP law. But last week, California's Fourth District Court of Appeal granted what the justices themselves called an "extraordinary" writ in the case. The ruling orders the lower court to strike the complaint finding the underlying claims arose from protected speech on matters of public concern. The Davis Wright team was led by partners Bruce Johnson, Ambika Kumar, and Diana Palacios.

A Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher team led by Josh Krevitt, Paul Torchia and Kate Dominguez also nab a runner-up spot for their win for EMC in a patent case brought by ACQIS. In a ruling handed down last month that was made public last week, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston granted summary judgment of non-infringement for EMC on all eight patents remaining in the case relating to modular computing systems. The ruling came after ACQIS had secured tens of millions of dollars in settlements from others by asserting the same patents. The Gibson Dunn team forced ACQIS to take positions in Patent Office proceedings challenging the patents that led to favorable claims construction in the case for EMC.

Also landing runners-up honors this week is a team at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison that knocked an antitrust class action brought on behalf of hospitals and healthcare providers in the U.S. accusing firm client Becton, Dickinson and Co. of conspiring with distributors to inflate the prices of syringes and IV catheters. Paul Weiss partner Bob Atkins previously landed LOTW honors in 2016 for fending off similar allegations from BD competitor Retractable Technologies Inc. at trial in the Eastern District of Texas and in the Fifth Circuit. In the provider case, U.S. District Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel in East St. Louis, Illinois granted BD's motion to dismiss with prejudice finding that the plaintiffs' conspiracy claim was "implausible on its face."  Atkins led the Paul Weiss team along with partners Jacqui Rubin and Bill Michael, who argued the motion to dismiss.