Our first runners-up this week are a trial team led by Dan Webb at Winston & Strawn, along with his partner Matthew Carter, Steven Mitby of Mitby Pacholder Johnson, and Jaye Quadrozzi of Young, Garcia, & Quadrozzi. After a three-week trial, a federal jury in Detroit awarded their client Versata Software Inc. more than $100 million in damages in a breach of contract and trade secret misappropriation showdown with Ford Motor Co. involving automotive configuration software. After a day-and-a-half of deliberations, eight jurors unanimously found this week that Ford breached the parties’ subscription agreement by reverse engineering Versata’s software for its own use and sided with Versata on multiple trade secret claims. Jurors also denied Ford’s breach of contract counterclaim. The trial team also included Winston & Strawn partner Brian Nisbet, associates Sarah Krajewski, John Drosick, Sam Zuidema, Monica Kociolek, Kelly Mannion Ellis, Pat Simonaitis and Tyree Petty-Williams, paralegals Martha Calvo and Schantel Deal-Ross, and practice coordinator Sandra Bell. The Mitby Pacholder Johnson team also included partner Timothy Johnson, attorney Drew Kim and paralegal Geoff Litke. The Young, Garcia & Quadrozzi team also included paralegal Shelley Kulick. Versata also had additional counsel from Jones & Spross including Lance Jones, Jennifer Trillsch and Sharoon Saleem.
Runners up honors also go to Nicholas Secco of Benesch, Eric Klein of Beveridge & Diamond, and Alex Swanson of Rutan & Tucker. After a three-day bench trial they handled in May, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson in Los Angeles last week found that California regulators couldn’t hold their clients liable for cleanup costs in the residential areas within a 1.7-mile radius of a former lead battery recycling plant in Vernon, California. The state has budgeted a total of $700 million to clean up residential and industrial sites surrounding the factory. The trial leaves pending who among the plant’s former owners and operators is liable for cleanup for the industrial portion of land in the half-mile radius around the facility. Swanson previously practiced at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher during May’s bench trial.
