Our first runners-up are Kannon Shanmugam, Jaren Janghorbani, Crystal Parker and their team at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison who convinced the Second Circuit to vacate a $570 million damages award against their client, IT services firm Syntel. Back in 2020, a team at Kirkland & Ellis landed Litigator of the Week honors representing Cognizant Technology Solutions and its subsidiary TriZetto Group in landing an $855 million jury verdict in a trade secrets case against Syntel in one of the first civil jury trials in the Southern District of New York during the pandemic. The Paul Weiss team persuaded the court to trim the award by more than a quarter-billion dollars post-trial. While the Second Circuit last week sided with TriZetto on the question of liability, the panel found in this particular case that TriZetto wasn't entitled to unjust enrichment damages under the Defend Trade Secrets Act based on Syntel's avoided development costs. "Syntel's misappropriation did not diminish, much less destroy, the secrets' continued commercial value to TriZetto," wrote Second Circuit Judge Richard Wesley. "TriZetto's valuable trade secrets are still that—valuable and secret," he wrote, remanding the case for further proceedings. Shanmugam argued the appeal for Syntel. Kirkland's John O'Quinn argued for TriZetto.  

Shout out to John DiLorenzo of Davis Wright Tremaine. This week the City Council in Portland, Oregon voted to approve a settlement with his clients, a group of disabled citizens who sued the city last year under the Americans with Disabilities Act claiming city sidewalks had been rendered inaccessible by tents, personal property, and debris from encampments. As part of the deal, the city has agreed to revamp reporting programs to ensure that those with mobility disabilities can report obstructions and to cease distributing tents or tarps to the unhoused through June 2028 with limited exceptions.

Shout out to Stefan Atkinson, Anna Rotman, Zack Ewing and Mike Rusie of Kirkland & Ellis. After a three-day trial last month, Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick this week allowed their client Antin Infrastructure Partners to walk away from a proposed merger with OpticalTel finding that OpticalTel breached its representations and warranties in the parties' merger agreement. McCormick found that Antin's termination of the deal was valid since an OpticalTel employee "came out of the woodwork" after the deal was announced claiming part ownership of an OpticalTel subsidiary, and OpticalTel did nothing to cure the breach