A Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan trial team led by Alex Spiro takes the first runner-up spot this week. For the past three-and-a-half weeks, Spiro and company defended Jay-Z at trial in Manhattan Supreme Court. Perfume company Parlux Fragrances LLC was seeking $68 million in damages, claiming the rapper hadn't fulfilled his contractual obligations to promote the Gold Jay-Z branded eau de toilette. As Spiro put it in his summation: "Why on Earth would Jay-Z put his name on one product and only one product in his entire career and want that product to fail?"

After a little more than two hours of deliberations, jurors sent the company away empty-handed. (Jurors also denied Jay-Z's claims that he was due unpaid royalties.) The Quinn Emanuel trial team also included Ellyde Thompson, Michael Lifrak, Cory Struble, Allison McGuire and Phillip Jobe.

Staying with the New York theme for the moment, Randy Mastro and Akiva Shapiro of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher get a runner-up nod for knocking out assault and battery claims brought by former Knicks All-Star power forward Charles Oakley, stemming from a high-profile incident at a February 2017 game in Madison Square Garden where he was ejected and physically removed from the arena. Second Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan, sitting by designation in federal court in Manhattan, took the rare step this week of granting summary judgment on Oakley's claims before discovery based on videotape evidence submitted by the Gibson Dunn lawyers on behalf of defendants MSG Networks, the Madison Square Garden Co., MSG Sports and Entertainment and Knicks owner James Dolan. Sullivan concluded, "while the parties tell two different stories about what happened in the Garden on February 8, 2017, the video footage conclusively rebuts Oakley's version of events – and vindicates Defendants' version." The defendants were also represented by Gibson Dunn associates Declan Conroy and Grace Hart.