[BreachExchange] 14 Lawyers Appointed to Lead Consumer Suits Over Marriott's Data Breach

[Destry Winant]

https://www.law.com/2019/04/29/14-lawyers-appointed-to-lead-consumer-suits-over-marriotts-data-breach/?slreturn=20190401095105

A federal judge in Maryland has appointed 14 lawyers to lead class
actions brought by consumers over Marriott Inc.’s data breach last
year.

Judge Paul Grimm of the U.S. District Court for the District of
Maryland appointed the leadership team, as well as others to lead
cases against Marriott brought by financial institutions and
shareholders, following a hearing on Monday. Among those appointed are
three veteran data breach lawyers as co-lead counsel: Andrew Friedman,
a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in Washington, D.C.; Amy
Keller of Chicago’s DiCello Levitt; and James Pizzirusso, a partner at
Hausfeld in Washington, D.C.

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.

“We’re honored to be appointed co-lead class counsel on this important
case,” Friedman wrote in an emailed statement. “Starwood, and later,
Marriott took more than four years to discover the breach, allowing
the unprecedented theft of hundreds of millions of their customers’
most sensitive data. We look forward to helping the victims of this
data breach hold Marriott accountable for its actions.”

More than 80 lawsuits were filed over the breach, which Marriott
International Inc. announced Nov. 30 and that compromised the personal
data of 500 million guests of its Starwood Hotels and Resorts
Worldwide properties (Marriott has since lowered that figure to fewer
than 383 million).

More than 30 lawyers submitted applications to spearhead the cases,
including four that suggested their own proposed leadership teams.
Those teams were smaller than what Grimm appointed in his final order,
which borrowed from all four proposed slates.

In a Feb. 13 order, Grimm had appointed Pizzirusso and Friedman as
interim co-lead counsel, along with Megan Jones, a San Francisco
partner at Hausfeld. Friedman and Pizzirusso had submitted a proposed
leadership team that would include the two of them, plus Keller, 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.”

Grimm appointed Jones to a plaintiffs’ steering committee that
included eight other attorneys from the other competing leadership
team proposals. He also selected another member of the interim co-lead
counsel’s proposed steering committee, James Ulwick of Baltimore’s
Kramon & Graham, to be co-liaison counsel.

But Grimm turned to other slates to complete the rest of the
leadership slots. The other co-liaison counsel will be Veronica Nannis
of Maryland’s Joseph Greenwald & Laake, who was part of a proposed
team of five lawyers. Grimm appointed two others from that group,
Timothy Maloney, also of Joseph Greenwald & Laake, and Daniel Robinson
of Robinson Calcagnie in Newport Beach, California, to the steering
committee.

That group had promised not to seek more than 28 percent of any
potential settlement in attorney fees.

The rest of the steering committee that Grimm appointed came from the
proposed co-leads two other groups. Those were Jason Lichtman, a New
York partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, and Eve-Lynn Rapp
of Edelson in San Francisco, from one proposed leadership team, and
two others from another one, Norman Siegel of Stueve Siegel Hanson in
Kansas City, who was co-lead counsel of the Equifax and Home Depot
cases, and Ariana Tadler of New York’s Milberg Tadler Phillips
Grossman.

Grimm also appointed MaryBeth Gibson of The Finley Firm in Atlanta,
and Gary Lynch of Carlson Lynch in Pittsburgh, two lawyers who
submitted individual applications, to the steering committee.

In addition to consumer suits, the order named a separate leadership
team for lawsuits brought by financial institutions over the breach.
Grimm appointed co-lead counsel 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
were Stuart Davidson, a partner in Boca Raton, Florida, at Robbins
Geller Rudman & Dowd; Brian Gudmundson of Minneapolis-based Zimmerman
Reed; and Charles Van Horn of Berman Fink Van Horn in Atlanta.
Gudmundson and Van Horn had leadership roles in cases against Equifax
and Home Depot, and Davidson was on the executive committee in the
Yahoo case that settled for $117.5 million.

The group, which represents the Bank of Louisiana, said they would
seek no more than 27.5 percent of any settlement for attorney fees.

Grimm also made the following appointments:

- For shareholder class actions: Labaton Sucharow in New York.
- For derivative shareholder cases: Co-lead counsel Timothy Brown of
The Brown Law Firm in Oyster Bay, New York, and Gregory Egleston of
New York’s Gainey McKenna & Egleston, with Andrew O’Connell of
Maryland’s Thomas & Libowitz as liaison counsel.