Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and a Shout Out
This week's lineup includes one runner-up who can claim the rare feat of having been edged out by himself.
June 11, 2021 at 07:25 AM
3 minute read
LitigationBill Burck, Stephen Hauss, and Daniel Koffman of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan land in the top runner-up spot this week for getting a long-running False Claims Act suit against insurance giant AIG knocked out with prejudice by a state trial court in New York. Former AIG employee Alex Grabcheski alleged that the company had evaded more than $50 million in state taxes for decades. MetLife previously settled similar claims related to a former AIG subsidiary that it has since acquired. But AIG's lawyers at Quinn convinced Judge John Kelley of New York Supreme Court this week that the conduct that MetLife conceded in 2014 was unlawful insurance activity actually does "not constitute the conducting of an insurance business under the [state's] Insurance Law or the Tax Law." (Extra kudos to Burck for being the rare litigator who can claim to have been bested by himself. Read our back-and-forth with him and colleague AJ Merton in this week's winner Q&A below.)
Also landing a runner-up spot is a team at Shook, Hardy & Bacon led by Hildy Sastre and Jennifer Hill. The Shook team won summary judgement for GlaxoSmithKline ending six years of multi-district litigation considering whether the nausea medication Zofran caused birth defects in 400 women using the drug during pregnancy. U.S. Chief District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV in Boston found last week that all of the plaintiffs' state law claims of failure to provide an adequate warning label were preempted by federal law.
One last runner-up spot goes to a team at Vinson & Elkins who helped Dallas plaintiffs lawyer Frank Branson get a personal injury judgment of more $200 million upheld in a products-liability case against Toyota Motor Corp. The opinion from the Dallas Court of Appeals upholds a trial win for the Reavis family, whose two young children suffered severe, permanent brain damage in a collision involving a Toyota-made Lexus vehicle. A Dallas jury previously found vehicle design defective and Toyota grossly negligent. V&E partner Marie Yeates argued the case before the Court of Appeals in April 2020. The V&E team, led by Harry Reasoner, also included Tom Leatherbury, Mike Heidler, George Gerachis, Max Etchemendy, Ben Moss, Parker Cragg, Ethan Nutter, and Bryan Gividen.
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