LINQ Using Max() to select a single row

I don't see why you are grouping here.

Try this:

var maxValue = table.Max(x => x.Status)
var result = table.First(x => x.Status == maxValue);

An alternate approach that would iterate table only once would be this:

var result = table.OrderByDescending(x => x.Status).First();

This is helpful if table is an IEnumerable<T> that is not present in memory or that is calculated on the fly.

Addressing the first question, if you need to take several rows grouped by certain criteria with the other column with max value you can do something like this:

var query =
    from u1 in table
    join u2 in (
        from u in table
        group u by u.GroupId into g
        select new { GroupId = g.Key, MaxStatus = g.Max(x => x.Status) }
    ) on new { u1.GroupId, u1.Status } equals new { u2.GroupId, Status = u2.MaxStatus}
    select u1;

You can also do:

(from u in table
orderby u.Status descending
select u).Take(1);

You can group by status and select a row from the largest group:

table.GroupBy(r => r.Status).OrderByDescending(g => g.Key).First().First();

The first First() gets the first group (the set of rows with the largest status); the second First() gets the first row in that group.
If the status is always unqiue, you can replace the second First() with Single().