Merchant claims still accepted, feds to receive over $7 million
ligible merchants can still file claims to receive their fair share of the settlement in the class-action “Visa Check/MasterMoney” antitrust case, according to Lloyd Constantine, Partner with the law firm Constantine Cannon, the lead counsel for the plaintiffs.
Also called the Wal-Mart suit for its lead plaintiff, the case, which concluded in 2003, threw out the card Associations’ honor-all-cards rules. It also established a settlement fund with nearly $3 billion in damages from the card Associations.
The law firm has not yet decided when to close the class. “If and when it’s our recommendation to the court that we end that, we will give public notification well in advance,” Constantine said in an interview.
U.S. merchants who accepted cards from Visa U.S.A. and MasterCard Worldwide between October 1992 and July 2003 are eligible for an award.
Making a federal case out of it
In recent weeks, the law firm has mailed checks to most class members (see “Industry Update” in this issue) and reached a settlement with the federal government.
In early 2006, the Justice Department sought to become a member of the merchant class. The government estimated its signature debit, credit and PIN debit claims at up to $11 million.
Counsel for the merchants asserted the government could sue the card Associations on its own behalf and had no standing in the merchant class. Negotiations led to the following compromise in December:
The merchant settlement fund will pay approximately one-third the amount ($3.7 million), Visa and MasterCard will pay about one-third, and the government has agreed to forego about one-third. Visa will pay $2 million and MasterCard will pay $1.5 million.
The compromise was the best course, Constantine said, because the government’s claim was 1) not a significant portion of the proceeds, and 2) hampering efforts to award funds to class members.
“While this dispute was pending, it was … casting a shadow over the settlement fund,” he said. The government’s claim prevented the fund from making final estimations of awards.
Given that the U.S. District Court had not ruled on the government’s claim, a compromise was preferable to waiting out the estimated two-year appeals process that would have followed a court decision.
Facing the music
As part of their 2003 settlement with merchants, Visa and MasterCard agreed to label debit cards as such on their face. The deadline for complying was Jan. 1, 2007. Member banks have re-issued their more than 250 million Visa- and MasterCard-branded ATM/debit cards with the word debit on the front.
“I was pleased to see that [issuing banks] were ahead of schedule in doing that,” Constantine said. Banks appear to have fully complied, but the firm has issued advisories to consumers asking them to report any failure to distinguish debit cards from credit.
Also part of the 2003 settlement: Merchants accepting the brands would now be allowed to ask for another form of payment when either type of card is offered for payment.
The card Associations agreed to pay $250 million annually into the settlement fund for 10 years.
From this, the fund will pay new claimants and, in 2007, make a major distribution to class members who accepted PIN debit during the period covered by the lawsuit.
Although merchants have generally been given one-time payments of all damages to which they are entitled, any money left over at the end of the fund’s life will be distributed as residual payments.
The court agreed in December to Constantine Cannon’s proposal that the 35,000 claimants who were owed less than $5 apiece be paid amounts of approximately $12 each.
The larger payment compensated them in full for any future residual distributions, to avoid sending checks for miniscule amounts at a later date, Constantine said. Those checks were part of the most recent distribution.