Retailers reached an antitrustsettlement on interchange fees with Visa, MasterCard and several large banks that will be good for merchants but might penalize cardholders with higher prices or decreased credit card rewards.
Just last week we read at the Point of Law blog and elsewhere about a Third Circuit ruling which rejected an absurd cy presdistribution in an antitrust class action settlement.
The DOJ's antitrust division reached a settlement with Visa Monday in a suit that stated that MasterCard and Visa had adopted rules that acted to restrain merchants from encouraging customers to use cards with lower fees.
The Petitioners asked the Court to review whether federal antitrust laws prohibit the settlement of patent litigation between a branded drug maker and a generic drug company which include a financial incentive for the generic company to hold off marketing its product for a time period.
No wonder that, in the current antitrust case, the Department of Justice is nervous about a settlement or a remedy that falls short of a break-up (an option that seems increasingly unlikely).
Also within NAAG is something called the "milk fund" (named after a 1989 settlement of a school-milk case), where NAAG keeps money it gets from antitrust settlements.