backNEW YORK, December 23, 2014 — Law360 has recognized five King & Spalding partners among the year’s most successful lawyers in its 2014 MVP Awards, making King & Spalding one of the top 10 award-winning firms in this year’s MVP series. The King & Spalding winners are Michael W. Johnston (employment), Robert E. Meadows (environmental), Michael E. Paulhus (health care), Phyllis B. Sumner (health care) and Chilton Davis Varner (product liability).
The annual awards acknowledge lawyers whose achievements in major litigation or transactions have set a new standard for accomplishment in corporate law. Despite limiting firms to just two nominations per category, Law360 editors received more than 800 nominations this year. Of those, only 171 lawyers spanning 29 different areas of the law were named MVPs.
To view the published profiles of King & Spalding’s Law360 MVPs in their entirety, click on the name of the individual below.
Johnston represented Bass Pro Outdoor World LLC in a high-profile Title VII discrimination case brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and wrapped up work in an influential retaliation suit against University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center before the U.S. Supreme Court to earn one of six spots among Law360's employment MVPs. Johnston has more than 30 years’ experience as a trial lawyer and has been lead counsel in over 125 trials. He focuses on employment litigation and counseling, including matters involving non-competition and non-solicitation agreements, trade secret laws, federal and state discrimination laws, Sarbanes-Oxley and other whistleblower statutes, wage and overtime statutes, the WARN Act, ERISA, employment agreements and state tort law.
Meadows’ representation of Chevron Corp. in its ongoing battle against a Louisiana levee board’s multibillion-dollar suit over alleged damage to the state’s coastal ecosystem and his successful defense of Shell Oil Co. in drinking water contamination litigation, among other cases, landed him one of five spots in the environmental category. Meadows is an accomplished trial lawyer known for winning challenging cases. He represents clients in litigation throughout the United States, including trials in state and federal courts, international and domestic arbitrations, summary jury trials and other forms of alternative dispute resolution. He regularly appears in court defending large corporations accused of environmental damage by plaintiffs seeking hundreds of millions of dollars for land restoration, personal injuries and remediation of municipal water supplies.
Michael E. Paulhus and Phyllis B. Sumner
Paulhus’s and Sumner’s involvement in helping nursing home pharmacy Omnicare Inc. battle unusual False Claim Act suits brought by a Medicare Part D plan secured both lawyers a place among this year’s five health care law MVPs.
Paulhus represents health care industry clients in False Claims Act cases before the U.S. Department of Justice and in civil litigation with relators, internal investigations and complex business litigation. He also provides compliance advice on health care regulatory issues. His clients include academic medical centers; regional hospital systems; publicly-traded hospital corporations; schools of medicine; multi-national pharmaceutical, medical device, and biologics manufacturers; health insurers; physician group practices; retail and long term care pharmacies; skilled nursing facility operators; and behavioral health facilities. In 2013, Paulhus was one of three health lawyers nationwide named a “rising star” by Law360.
Sumner represents clients in a wide variety of complex litigation matters involving commercial disputes, False Claims Act, information privacy and security, Fair Credit Reporting Act, RICO, securities and fraud. She also provides counsel on a variety of corporate matters, including privacy and information security compliance, white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement matters and internal corporate investigations. Sumner was an assistant United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and the Northern District of Georgia, where she successfully prosecuted public corruption, domestic terrorism, tax, financial fraud, money laundering, healthcare fraud and other complex criminal matters.
Among the high-profile matters she has litigated are the cases against Centennial Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph and former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell.
Varner’s work securing several important victories for Merck & Co., which was facing more than 800 cases in multidistrict litigation over its osteoporosis medicine Fosamax, earned her a spot among the six product liability MVPs. Varner has 30 years of courtroom experience as a trial lawyer defending corporations in product liability, business torts, contract and other commercial disputes. She has served as trial and appellate counsel for a number of the largest pharmaceutical, medical device and automotive manufacturers in the United States and is experienced in mass tort litigation, class actions and MDL litigation, including the complex issues of discovery, attorney-client privilege and Daubert challenges to expert testimony that accompany such suits. Varner is a past president of the American College of Trial Lawyers, an organization that selects the best of the trial bar as its members.
About King & Spalding
Celebrating more than 125 years of service, King & Spalding is an international law firm that represents a broad array of clients, including half of the Fortune Global 100, with 800 lawyers in 17 offices in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The firm has handled matters in over 160 countries on six continents and is consistently recognized for the results it obtains, uncompromising commitment to quality and dedication to understanding the business and culture of its clients. More information is available at www.kslaw.com.