Our Litigators of the Week are Josh Rosenkranz, Eric Shumsky and Chris Cariello of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. After taking on an appeal for Massachusetts software company Pegasystems Inc. post-trial, the Orrick team secured a ruling this week from a Virginia appellate court wiping out a $2 billion trade secret damages verdict won by rival Appian Corp.
The Virginia Court of Appeals found that the trial court erred in multiple ways, including via a jury instruction that relieved Appian of the burden to link the alleged trade secret misappropriation with damages. That ruling allowed jurors to rely on Pega’s total sales when calculating damages.
