Our first runner-up this week is Eric Heyer of Thompson Hine. After a rare en banc hearing at the Fifth Circuit last year, Heyer got a win this week for client Triton Distribution in a regulatory showdown with the Food and Drug Administration. The court found that the FDA acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it changed its evaluation standards for certain flavored e-cigarette products midstream—something Circuit Judge Andrew Oldman called "regulatory switcheroos" in his majority opinion. The court ordered the FDA to give Triton "a full and fair regulatory proceeding on remand." So far the Eleventh and Fifth Circuits have found that the agency acted arbitrarily and capriciously, while five other circuits have sided with the FDA. 

Acting as special litigation counsel for Celsius Network Ltd. and its affiliated debtors, Mitchell Hurley and his team at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld secured a bankruptcy settlement at the end of the year in the Southern District of New York resulting in StakeHound transferring more than 27,500 ETH, 47.9 million MATIC and 90,940,000 DOT—tokens worth more than $105 million. The settlement comes after the Akin team previously secured a temporary restraining order freezing StakeHound's assets. The Akin team also includes Dean Chapman and Elizabeth Scott; counsel Nicholas Lombardi and associates Michael Chen, Michael Stanley, Kyle McGoey, Tina Jeffcoat, Michael Standley and Patrick Glackin. 

A team at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer led by partners David Livshiz and Boris Feldman and counsel Peter Linken fended off a shareholder attempt to unwind a $2.9 billion take-private deal involving Sumitovant Biopharma Limited and Myovant Sciences Limited. The lawsuit alleged Myovant's proxy statement was materially false and misleading because it didn't disclose the "potential" conflicts on the part of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the deal counsel to the special committee of Myovant's board of directors. The plaintiff pointed to Skadden's representation of entities that had small indirect equity investments in Sumitovant's corporate parent. Senior U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, however, dismissed the suit with prejudice last week finding the plaintiff failed to identify any "actual" conflict on Skadden's part, since the firm hadn't represented Sumitovant, its corporate parent, or any company "operationally integrated" with Sumitovant. The Freshfields team also included associates Elena Hadjimichael, Nathan Hembree, Abby Kritta, Jake Rothstein and Raul Orozco.