In re Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation
United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
330 F.R.D. 11 (2019)
- Written by Liz Nakamura, JD
Facts
Over 12 million merchants who accepted Visa and Mastercard credit cards (merchants) (plaintiffs) sued Visa and Mastercard (defendants) in a multidistrict, class-action, antitrust litigation alleging that Visa and Mastercard colluded to charge artificially high credit card fees. The litigation went on for over a decade and involved hundreds of court proceedings and millions of pages of discovery. The Second Circuit rejected the initial class-action settlement proposal because it grouped the merchants seeking damages and the merchants seeking injunctive relief into the same settlement. The merchants subsequently split into two classes: a damages group and an injunction group. On remand, the merchants seeking damages submitted a new class-action settlement proposal for preliminary approval following notice to class members. The proposed settlement would give all class members pro-rata shares of up to $6.26 billion. $6.26 billion was a fraction of the $100 billion in credit card fees charged to merchants in the relevant time period but was in line with settlements in similar class actions. The pro-rata shares would be calculated by class counsel and subject to challenge by class members prior to finalization. The class settlement notice also included detailed information regarding the release of liability included in the settlement.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Brodie, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 788,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,200 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
