Our first runners-up this week are Roberta Kaplan and Shawn Crowley of Kaplan Hecker & Fink who followed up their Litigator of the Week-winning defamation verdict for E. Jean Carroll from last year with a second verdict against former President Donald Trump. After Trump this week walked out of the courtroom while Kaplan was delivering her closing argument, jurors in Manhattan federal court deliberated for just three hours before finding that he must pay an additional $83.3 million to Carroll—$18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitives. The Kaplan Hecker team also includes partner Joshua Matz, special counsel Matthew Craig, counsel Trevor Morrison, and associates Helen Andrews, Emma DeCourcy and Kate Harris.
Marcus Asner, Sara Shudofsky and their trial team at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer secured a defense verdict for Sotheby’s in a case where the auction house stood accused of aiding and abetting a Swiss art dealer in cheating Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev out of tens of millions of dollars. Jurors in Manhattan found this week that Rybolovlev hadn’t proven that Sotheby’s had a hand in any alleged fraud involving sales of paintings by Gustav Klimt, Leonardo da Vinci and René Magritte, and a sculpture by Amedeo Modigliani. The Arnold & Porter team also included senior associate Benjamin Wolverton, associates Sahrula Kubie, Renata Politanski and Yiqing Shi with Neal Katyal of Hogan Lovells weighing in on legal and appellate issues.
