John Yanchunis, left, of Morgan & Morgan and Stuart Davidson of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd

Two Florida attorneys have been proposed to take lead roles for plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation over Marriott's large-scale customer data breach.

John Yanchunis of Morgan & Morgan in Tampa is on a slate of seven lawyers, and Stuart Davidson of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd in Boca Raton is on a list for financial institutions that isn't competing for overall leadership. In all, dozens of lawyers submitted applications.

More than 80 lawsuits were filed over the breach announced last November by Marriott International Inc. The company initially said the personal data of 500 million guests at its Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide properties was lost but later narrowed the count to fewer than 383 million.

The cases were coordinated as multidistrict litigation before U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm in Maryland, where Marriott is based.

More than 30 applications poured in Friday, including four with slates of attorneys, many of whom have handled the nation's largest data breach cases. Most of the applications came from individual lawyers, several of whom were women.

“Diversity in multidistrict litigation leadership positions is crucial, as plaintiffs' counsel must work collaboratively to obtain equitable and appropriate relief on behalf of a diverse class of consumers,” wrote Mila Bartos, a partner at Finkelstein Thompson in Washington. “However, women and minorities are to date still underrepresented in MDL leadership positions despite recent gains.”

Grimm has scheduled a hearing on the leadership applications for April 29.

In a Feb. 13 order, he appointed three lawyers as interim co-lead counsel: Hausfeld partners Megan Jones in San Francisco and James Pizzirusso in Washington, and Andrew Friedman, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in Washington.

On Friday, Friedman and Pizzirusso submitted a “right-sized, diverse slate” that would include the two of them plus Amy Keller of Chicago's DiCello Levitt as co-lead counsel. Jones would be one of five members of a plaintiffs' steering committee.

The slate, they wrote, “reflects the diversity of the bar and the plaintiff class — from the standpoint of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, experience and geographical location.”

Both Pizzirusso and Friedman were on the plaintiffs' steering committee in the data breach cases against Equifax and Home Depot. Keller was co-lead counsel in Equifax, and Friedman was co-lead counsel in the Anthem data breach case that settled for $115 million.

The largest proposed slate of seven lawyers would be more than half women or minorities. Three would be co-lead counsel: Norman Siegel, Ariana Tadler and Hassan Murphy. There would be four members on a plaintiffs' steering committee, including Yanchunis, who served on the Equifax steering committee with Siegel of Stueve Siegel Hanson in Kansas City, Missouri; Tadler of New York's Milberg Tadler Phillips Grossman; and Murphy of Murphy Falcon & Murphy in Baltimore. Seigel and Yanchunis also were co-lead counsel in the Home Depot case, and Yanchunis was lead counsel of the data breach case against Yahoo that settled for $117.5 million. 

An uncontested slate of five attorneys applied to represent the financial institutions affected by Marriott's breach. In other data breach cases, judges have allowed financial institutions to pursue their claims on a separate track from consumers.

That group, which represents the Bank of Louisiana in its suit against Marriott, suggested that lead counsel would be Steven Silverman of Maryland's Silverman Thompson Slutkin White and Arthur Murray of Murray Law Firm in New Orleans, who served in leadership positions in the cases against Equifax and Home Depot.

On the plaintiffs' steering committee would be Davidson, who was on the executive committee in the Yahoo case; Charles Van Horn of Berman Fink Van Horn in Atlanta, who held leadership roles in Equifax and Home Depot; and Brian Gudmundson of Minneapolis-based Zimmerman Reed, who has served in leadership of “nearly every major data breach litigation on behalf of financial institutions,” including Equifax and Home Depot, they wrote.

Plaintiffs lawyers appointed to lead multidistrict litigation have historically been men, though there are signs of change. Women secured a record number of lead counsel positions at 35 percent in 2018, according to Law.com research.

Some lawyers, such as Thiago Coelho and Justin Marquez of the Wilshire Law Firm in Los Angeles, cited their ethnic diversity in applying for leadership roles in the Marriott case.

In an April 11 order, Grimm issued guidelines for leadership applicants, including whether they anticipate “using third party litigation funding and from whom” and how they would keep billing costs down.

The 2012 appointee of President Barack Obama asked lawyers for an unusually large number of details about how they plan to finance their cases. He said lawyers should discuss billing rates as well as the percentage of the settlement fund they anticipate requesting for their fees.

If litigation funders were contemplated, he asked who they would be and the amount of control they would have on “litigation strategy and settlement discussions.” He also asked applicants to disclose any agreements they had with other lawyers involving “funding, cost-sharing, or pooling clients for strategic reasons,” and how they would monitor billing to keep costs down.

None of the applicants said they used third-party funders.

Grimm is not the only judge pushing for more scrutiny of billing and outside litigation financing in MDL cases. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, in the Northern District of California, has criticized plaintiffs attorneys for excessive billing in data breach cases against Anthem and Yahoo.