Our first runner-up this week is a team at Paul Hastings that turned things around for start-up fintech bank Aeldra Financial in a trade secret case brought by its CEO's former employer, East West Bank. U.S. District Judge William Orrick III in San Francisco issued an injunction against Aeldra Financial before the Paul Hastings lawyers stepped in. But after the defense team surfaced an arbitration agreement between EWB and its former executive, as well as published patent applications they say disclosed a majority of the trade secrets EWB is asserting, the judge last week dissolved the injunction and compelled arbitration in the case. The team representing Aeldra Financial is led by global IP co-chair of Paul Hastings, Yar Chaikovsky, and litigation partner Bo Pearl, and includes associates Andy LeGolvan, Boris Lubarsky and David Fox.

Also landing runners-up honors this week is a team at Cohen Ziffer Frenchman & McKenna that got an against-the-grain ruling allowing a pandemic-related insurance coverage case brought by a policyholder to move forward. Judge Raymond Mitchell of the Chancery Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, denied Continental Casualty Company's motion for reconsideration of his earlier ruling denying the insurer's motion to dismiss a business interruption lawsuit filed by Cohen Ziffer client JDS Construction Group, LLC. "Judges are not sheep, and I do not decide a case by counting noses. Further, the 'herd' can be wrong," Mitchell wrote. The team representing JDS includes firm chair Robin Cohen, partners Jillian Raines and Meredith Elkins and counsel Tali Epstein.

Runners-up honors also go to a Beveridge & Diamond team that got two reversals last week from New York's Appellate Division knocking out proposed class actions lawsuits against the operator of two upstate landfills. The suits, brought on behalf of proposed classes of property owners who live near the landfills, brought public nuisance and negligence claims alleging that odors emanating from them harmed private property rights and property values. Mike Murphy argued both appeals for the landfill defendants and was assisted by colleagues Megan Brillault, John Paul, Katelyn Ciolino, Katrina Krebs and James Slaughter.