Litigator of the (Past) Week Runners-Up and Shout-Outs

Zach Holmstead, Ragan Naresh, Brad Weidenhammer and Britt Cramer were recognized as runners-up for The American Lawyer's "Litigator of the Week" for their work for client Syngenta AG. 

"... A team at Kirkland & Ellis got a big win for client Syngenta AG in cases coordinated in California state court, where plaintiffs claimed that exposure to the company’s paraquat herbicide caused them to develop Parkinson’s disease. Contra Costa County Superior Judge Charles Treat, who is overseeing the paraquat proceedings in state court, granted Syngenta’s motion to exclude the plaintiffs’ sole general causation expert, Dr. Martin Wells, a professor of biostatistics at Cornell University. The judge found that Wells, whose testimony was excluded in the federal paraquat MDL earlier this year, “used shifting criteria for the studies included an inconsistent application of inclusion/exclusion criteria to achieve a results-driven meta-analysis to support an association and causation opinion.” The Kirkland team includes Zach Holmstead, Ragan Naresh, Brad Weidenhammer and Britt Cramer."