Earlier this year when the Third Circuit nixed Johnson & Johnson's initial attempt to route its talc liabilities into bankruptcy via its subsidiary LTL Management, we handed Litigator of the Week honors to Jeffrey Lamken of MoloLamken, Jonathan Massey of Massey & Gail and Michael Winograd of Brown Rudnick, who co-led the appellate team for the official committee of talc claimants. Last week, back at the bankruptcy court in New Jersey, Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan dismissed the second LTL bankruptcy filing, finding a "lack of imminent and immediate financial distress." Given that result, runners-up honors this week go to the committee's bankruptcy counsel, including Otterbourg partners Melanie Cyganowski and Adam Silverstein, Brown Rudnick's Winograd and his partners David Molton, Cameron Moxley and Jeff Jonas, as well as Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg.

Also getting a spot among the runners-up are lawyers at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle who secured a Ninth Circuit ruling this week reversing a judgment confirming an international arbitral award of about $1.3 billion against their client, Antrix Corp., India's government-owned space and satellite company. The Ninth Circuit reversed a decision from Senior U.S. District Thomas S. Zilly concluding that the district court lacked personal jurisdiction over Antrix to enforce the International Chamber of Commerce's prior arbitration award to Antrix's foreign investors. The appellate team for Antrix was led by Curtis partner Joseph Pizzurro and included partners Kevin Meehan, Juan Perla and associate Marwa Farag. 

An appellate team led by Jay Neukom of Debevoise & Plimpton also gets a runner-up nod. The Federal Circuit this week upheld a ruling knocking out seven patents and more than 120 patent claims related to systems for data compression that Realtime Data brought against Neukom's client Fortinet Inc. as well as eight codefendants. Neukom argued the latest appeal for all of the defendants. The team representing Fortinet also included Debevoise counsel Barbara Barath and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom partner Douglas Nemec, counsel James Pak, and associates Eliza Edlich and Christopher McKinley.