Our first runners-up this week are a team at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd led by Spencer Burkholz and Scott Saham that got final approval this week on a $300 million settlement on behalf of Wells Fargo shareholders. Plaintiffs claimed the bank concealed its practice of "force-placing" unneeded insurance on hundreds of thousands of auto loan customers—a practice which an internal Wells Fargo report found led to nearly 25,000 vehicle repossessions. U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco noted at the fairness hearing last month that this was "a difficult case" before signing off on attorney fees of $75 million, or 25% of the total settlement. The Robbins Geller team also included Jason Forge, Jason Davis, Lucas Olts, Ashley Kelly, Erika Oliver and Kevin Sciarani. 

The litigators at Winston & Strawn had not one, not two, but three runner-up-worthy wins for separate clients during the past week. First up is a team led by Michael Rueckheim, George Lombardi and Claire Fundakowski defending Intuitive Surgical in a patent infringement case brought by Rex Medical in the District of Delaware. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika last week slashed a $10 million damages verdict Rex won at trial to just $1 dollar finding the record "wholly lacking in evidence" to determine a reasonable royalty rate for the infringed surgical stapler patent. The Winston team also included of counsel JC Masullo and associates Evan Lewis and David Houck, with local co-counsel from Karen Elizabeth Keller and Nathan Roger Hoeschen of Shaw Keller.

Next up is a Winston team that scored a defense win for Corning Inc. in a case brought by entrepreneur John Wilson and Wilson Wolf Manufacturing Corp. claiming Corning's cell-culturing HYPERFlask and HYPERStack products drew on information shared with Corning starting back in 2004 under a confidential disclosure agreement. After a month-long bench trial in St. Paul, Minnesota, last November (brrr!), U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank found this week that Corning developed the products independently without any confidential or trade-secret information and that Wilson hadn't proven his inventorship claims with respect to three Corning patents at trial. Lombardi led the trial team with partner Linda Coberly briefing and arguing critical legal issues before, during, and after the trial. The Winston team also included Kimball Anderson, Paula Hinton, Ivan Poullaos, Robine Grant, Michael Meneghini and Brandi Pikes with co-counsel from Lora Friedemann and Kelsey McElveen of Fredrikson & Byron and Jeff Barron of Barnes & Thornburg.