The Attorney General of West Virginia appointed Jonathan Cuneo and Daniel Cohen to prosecute an action against Visa/MasterCard for alleged violations of West Virginia’s consumer and antitrust statutes. The case involved a policy maintained by Visa and MasterCard that required merchants to accept Visa/MasterCard debit cards if, as nearly all merchants do, they also accepted Visa/MasterCard credit cards.
The complaint alleges that this “honor all cards” policy resulted in the escalating use of the Visa and MasterCard debit cards by consumers, while forcing merchants to accept them and pay artificially inflated fees for their use that were passed along to consumers. The case settled in 2008 for over $16 million.