Our first runners-up are G. Hopkins Guy III, Kurt Pankratz, Rob Maier, Lauren Dreyer, Ali Dhanani, Jamie Lynn and their team at Baker Botts who represented DISH Network in a patent showdown with ClearPlay Inc. U.S. District Judge David Nuffer in Utah this week granted DISH’s motion for judgment of a matter of law finding DISH’s AutoHop feature doesn’t infringe ClearPlay’s patents on technology to filter out content including violence and swearing from movies. Nuffer granted the motion during a telephonic hearing this week, wiping out a nearly $470 million jury verdict handed down two weeks ago. Brent Hatch, Tyler Snow and Adam Pace of Hatch Law Group were local counsel for DISH.
Runners-up honors go to defense lawyers for four remaining defendants accused of conspiring to overbill insurers by hundreds of millions of dollars for urine drug tests through rural hospitals in Florida, Georgia and Missouri. Federal prosecutors previously won convictions against two defendants at the prior trial in Jacksonville, Florida in 2022, and secured guilty pleas from two additional defendants earlier this year. The prior jury, however, deadlocked on charges against defendants Aaron Durall, Christian Fletcher, Neisha Zaffuto and Aaron Alonzo. After two days of deliberations after the retrial, this week jurors sent a note to U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan saying they were deadlocked. But after an Allen charge and two more hours of deliberations, the jury found all four defendants not guilty. Brian Rafferty of Baker & Hostetler represented Durall. Steven Sadow of Schulten Ward Turner & Weiss and Vince Citro of Horwitz & Citro represented Fletcher. Joshua Lowther of Lowther | Walker represented Zaffuto. Andrew Bonderud of The Bonderud Law Firm represented Alonzo.
