For the 12th consecutive year, The National Law Journal (NLJ) has named WilmerHale to its Appellate Hot List, which highlights the best of the nation’s firms with significant appellate practices. The 25 firms recognized in the 2019 list have “won key matters before the US Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals, staying true to their practice philosophies along the way,” stated NLJ Editor-in-Chief Lisa Helem. 

As part of the special report, appellate practice leaders shared the keys to their appellate team’s success. In a featured Q&A, Danielle Spinelli, vice chair of WilmerHale’s Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Practice, discussed achieving a victory at the US Supreme Court for WilmerHale client Mission Product Holdings in a highly significant Chapter 11 case, Mission Product Holdings v. Tempnology. Mission stated that Tempnology could not terminate its rights to trademarks by rejecting a license agreement in bankruptcy. The Court’s decision concluded that a rejection was the equivalent of a nonbankruptcy breach, which resolved a decades long confusion surrounding the meaning of “rejection.” 

“Mission illustrates how we combine our top-notch appellate capabilities with deep substantive knowledge of specific practice areas —bankruptcy and intellectual property, among others— to achieve compelling advocacy on complex and specialized issues” said Spinelli.