Juul e-cigarette. Photo: Shutterstock.com

Dozens of lawyers suing electronic cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc. packed a Los Angeles courtroom  to convince the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation which judge should hear the cases.

About 55 lawsuits brought against Juul across the country were among the matters before the MDL panel, which also heard arguments on class actions brought over Capital One's data breach last year.

Lawyers in the Juul cases filled half the courtroom, which was standing room only. Many cited recent news about Juul as reasons for a certain judge.

"This is a massive litigation: It is massively complex, and we're in the early stages," said Andy Birchfield of Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles. "The case is growing more complex day by day."

On Wednesday, Juul announced CEO Kevin Burns stepped down immediately and the company suspended all advertisements of its products. New CEO K.C. Crosthwaite came from Philip Morris USA parent Altria Group Inc., which has a 35% stake in Juul.

The hearing followed decisions by Walmart and other retailed to stop selling e-cigarettes and vaping products, and cities and states have banned the products. Juul also faces mounting regulatory pressure from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is investigating Juul's marketing claims to children.

MDL panel chairwoman Sarah Vance, who sits on the Eastern District of Louisiana, started the hearing Thursday by announcing this would be her last hearing as head of the MDL panel. U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell of the Eastern District of Kentucky, a current panelist, will be the new chairwoman.

When the Juul cases came up, defense attorney Austin Schwing, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in San Francisco, said he would prefer the cases go near his client's headquarters in San Francisco before U.S. District Judge William Orrick of the Northern District of California but was open to U.S. District Judge Brian Martinotti of the District of New Jersey.

Some plaintiffs lawyers supported Orrick, including Elizabeth Cabraser of San Francisco's Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein. In briefs, she initially advocated for Orrick to handle class actions, which alleged Juul's misleading marketing failed to disclose the nicotine in its products, causing young adults and teenagers to get addicted, while Martinotti could hear the personal injury cases whose claims focused on pulmonary disease, seizures and other serious health problems.

Now Cabraser said the cases were too massive and complex to be divided. "Events in the past few minutes have overtaken me," she said.

Birchfield, who also changed his mind about dividing the cases, said "we need an experienced hand" as a judge. He supported Martinotti, who served as one of three judges overseeing mass torts in New Jersey state court's Multicounty Litigation Center before his appointment to the federal bench in 2016.

One district that got a poor reception from the panel was Maryland, where U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm issued a groundbreaking ruling earlier this year against the FDA over the timeline of its approval of e-cigarettes. Scott Schlesinger of the Schlesinger Law Offices in Fort Lauderdale, attempted to convince the panel that regulatory action involving e-cigarettes, such as the one at issue in that case, were significant to the lawsuits, but several judges struggled to understand his argument.

The Capital One breach compromised the personal information, including Social Security numbers, of 100 million customers in the United States and 6 million in Canada. With more than 50 cases filed, the panel asked how much coordination was necessary with a criminal case in Seattle, where Paige Thompson, the alleged hacker, is set for trial Nov. 4. Tina Wolfson of Ahdoot & Wolfson in Los Angeles argued the criminal case required the lawsuits go to the Western District of Washington.

Other lawyers disagreed. Morgan & Morgan's John Yanchunis in Tampa said the criminal case was "not the important focus" of the data breach cases. He and other lawyers, including David Balser for Capital One, argued instead over whether the panel should send the cases to Alexandria or Richmond in the Eastern District of Virginia. Capital One's headquarters is in McLean, Virginia.

Balser, an Atlanta partner at King & Spalding, said the Alexandria division was "by far" the most logical forum since the servers for Amazon Web Services are located there and discovery in the criminal case was "up in the air right now."