Our first runners-up this week are Lisa Blatt, Amy Saharia and their team at Williams & Connolly who got an appellate win upholding a ruling knocking out multidistrict litigation targeting client GlaxoSmithKline. The First Circuit this week declined to revive claims brought on behalf of more than 400 women who claimed GSK failed to warn them that taking the anti-nausea drug Zofran could cause birth defects. The ruling upholds GSK's 2021 summary judgment win before U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor in Boston who found federal drug labeling law preempted the plaintiffs' state law claims. The Williams & Connolly team also included Jami King as well as co-counsel at Shook Hardy & Bacon including Madeleine McDonough, Hildy Sastre, Bill Geraghty, Jennifer Hill, Jennifer Stevenson and Tom Sheehan.

Nick Gravante of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and the rest of the defense team for Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, land runners-up honors as well. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan this week sentenced Weisselberg to five months of prison time after he testified at trial against the company. Weisselberg previously pleaded guilty in August to 15-counts including larceny and tax fraud charges after receiving $1.76 million in unreported compensation, including rent for a Manhattan apartment, luxury cars and private school tuition for his grandchildren. The sentence was well short of the five to 15 years he potentially faced without the plea deal. Weisselberg's defense team also included Mary Mulligan of Friedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman and Bryan Skarlatos of Kostelanetz & Fink, as well as Elizabeth Moore and Dillon Carlin of Cadwalader.  

Shout out to Mark Hanchet, Rob Hamburg and Andrew Pincus of Mayer Brown who represented HSBC at the Second Circuit in an Anti-Terrorism Act lawsuit brought on behalf of families of U.S. service members killed in terrorist attacks by Iraqi Shi'a militias and service members wounded in those attacks. The lawsuit claimed HSBC and five codefendant banks helped Iranian banks and institutions circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iran and ultimately fund the militias. The Second Circuit upheld the dismissal of the case finding the plaintiffs failed to adequately allege the banks conspired either directly or indirectly with the terrorist groups, or that the attacks furthered a conspiracy to circumvent the sanctions against Iran. Pincus argued at the Second Circuit for all defendants. Mayer Brown partners Marc Cohen and Alex Lakatos represented codefendant Credit Suisse, while Alexis Collins, Jonathan Blackman and Carmine Boccuzzi Jr. of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton represented Commerzbank, Michael Tomaino Jr. and Jeffrey Scott of Sullivan & Cromwell represented Barclays Bank, Sharon Nelles, Andrew Finn and Bradley Smith of Sullivan & Cromwell represented Standard Chartered Bank, and Robert Houck of Clifford Chance represented Royal Bank of Scotland.