Our first runners-up this week are David Buchanan of Seeger Weiss and Bryan Aylstock of Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis, & Overholtz, the leaders of the trial team representing a pair of Army veterans who won a $110 million jury verdict last week in the 11th bellwether trial in the 3M Combat Arms Earplug MDL. The win, the largest so far in the cases alleging the dual-ended combat earplugs used in the U.S. military caused hearing loss and ringing of the ears, or tinnitus, includes $40 million in punitive damages for each of the plaintiffs, William Wayman and Ronald Sloan. Buchanan told my Law.com colleague Amanda Bronstad that after the 10 prior trials, which resulted in five wins for plaintiffs and five for defendants, there’s been some shift in tactics on both sides. “We got a sense of their defenses, and maybe the corporate defense last April wasn’t there anymore,” he said. “It’s shifting focus from defending this plug to challenging case-specific causation. We’ve refined our story and are effectively taking the jury into the lives of these service members and soldiers and how their tinnitus is impacting their lives after service.” Buchanan and Aylstock co-led the trial along with Shelley Hutson of Clark, Love & Hutson and Michael Sacchet of Ciresi Conlin.
Shout out to a team at Latham & Watkins that represented Camping World Holdings Inc. and the company’s officers and directors, in knocking out a derivative suit last week at the Delaware Court of Chancery. In one of the first rulings applying the demand futility analysis laid out in last year’s Zuckerberg decision from the Delaware Supreme Court, Vice Chancellor Lori Will found that the plaintiffs in the insider trading case hadn’t sufficiently shown that any defendant traded based on material nonpublic information. The Latham team led by partners Andrew Clubok, Eric Swibel and Jooyoung Yeu with associates Kathryn George and Katherine Magaziner.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.
For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]
