First up this week are Philippe Selendy, Jennifer Selendy, Sean Baldwin and their team at Selendy Gay, who landed what appears to be the largest damages award in an earnout dispute in Delaware history for their clients, former investors in Auris Health Inc. Vice Chancellor Lori Will found that Johnson & Johnson owes more than $1 billion in damages and interest after it failed to honor its agreement to make "commercially reasonable efforts" to help Auris' surgical robot iPlatform meet certain milestones after a 2019 acquisition. "J&J's promise to Auris was broken almost immediately after closing," Will wrote. "Instead of providing efforts and resources to achieve the regulatory milestones, J&J thrust iPlatform into a head-to-head faceoff against [its own robot] Verb called 'Project Manhattan.'" The team representing the former Auris stockholders also included Selendy Gay partner Oscar Shine and associates Meredith Nelson, Julie Singer and Jeff Zalesin, as well as Bradley Aronstam and Roger Stronach of Ross Aronstam & Moritz.

David Sanford of Sanford Heisler Sharp secured a win for the family of murder victim Hae Min Lee last week at the Maryland Supreme Court. The state's high court held the family had "rights to be heard" on the motion that freed Adnan Syed in the case that received widespread attention via the "Serial" podcast. In a 4-3 decision, the court held the trial court violated the rights of Lee's brother, Young Lee, to be notified of the hearing and attend it in person. "In an effort to remedy what they perceived to be an injustice to Mr. Syed, the prosecutor and the circuit court worked an injustice against Mr. Lee by failing to treat him with dignity, respect, and sensitivity and, in particular, by violating Mr. Lee's rights as a crime victim's representative to reasonable notice of the Vacatur Hearing, the right to attend the hearing in person, and the right to be heard on the merits of the Vacatur Motion," wrote Justice Jonathan Biran.