Runners-up honors go to Orin Snyder, Karin Portlock, Lauren Blas and their team at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who won a $375,000 verdict for pro bono client Deon Jones who was shot in in the face with a rubber bullet by a Los Angeles officer during May 2020 protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder. After a seven-day trial, a federal jury in Orange County last week found the officer's conduct toward Jones "was malicious, oppressive, or in reckless disregard" of his rights, and awarded $125,000 in punitive damages. The firm's work for Jones is part of its broader efforts on issues of racial justice and equity directed by Katie Marquart, the firm's pro bono chair, who was part of the trial team. That team also included partner Matt Kahn, as well as associates Lee Crain, Mark Cherry, Lauren Dansey, Tim Biché, Courtney Johnson, Ariana Sañudo, Chaplin Carmichael, Viola Li, Isabella Sayyah, Katy Baker, Lana El-Farra, Jabari Julien, Amanda Sadra and Terry Wong. 

Hogan Lovells partners Neal Katyal and Katie Wellington also get a runners-up nod for getting a ruling this week from Hawaii's Supreme Court reversing an $834 million penalty against clients Bristol Myers Squibb and Sanofi. The state previously won a bench trial where the drug companies were accused of violating the state's Unfair or Deceptive Acts and Practices law by failing to disclose that the antiplatelet drug Plavix was less effective in patients who had certain liver-enzyme mutations before the FDA updated Plavix's label with that information in 2009. The state's high court, however, found the trial court improperly sided with the state on the issue of whether the label was material to consumers, leading to an improper calculation of damages on a per-prescription basis. This week's decision upheld the trial court's unfair acts ruling and remanded the case to a new judge for a trial on the remaining deceptive acts and penalty issues. Paul Alston and Claire Wong Black of Dentons and Anand Agneshwar and Daniel Pariser of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer joined the Hogan Lovells team on the briefs.

Raise a glass of beer to a trial team at Kirkland & Ellis led by Sandra Goldstein, Stefan Atkinson and Sierra Elizabeth—and by that, we mean hard seltzer. A unanimous federal jury in Manhattan this week sided with Kirkland client Constellation Brands on the question of whether Corona Hard Seltzer and Modelo Ranch Water constitute "beer" or "Mexican-style beer" under the company's agreement with Modelo to use the Corona and Modelo trademarks on "beer" sold in the United States. Modelo and its parent company Anheuser-Busch argued Constellation made billions in profits through the license agreement and that the seltzer products exceeded its bounds. Last year U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan who is overseeing the case wrote in his summary judgment ruling that "Modelo has more dictionaries on its side of this debate over the meaning of 'beer' than does [Constellation]." But the judge allowed the case to proceed to trial finding the meaning in the underlying agreement ambiguous. So, cheers once again to the Kirkland trial team, which also included partners Dan Cellucci, Jenny Lee and associate Amal El Bakhar.