Visa taps hardened D.C. duo to battle US monopoly lawsuit
By Mike Scarcella
Sept 25 (Reuters) -Visa V.N has hired a pair of prominent Washington, D.C., antitrust lawyers to help it fight the U.S. Justice Department's new lawsuit accusing the payments giant of monopolizing debit card markets.
Visa’s defense lawyers include longtime trial lawyer Beth Wilkinson of the litigation firm Wilkinson Stekloff, and Jonathan Gleklen, who leads the antitrust group at 1,000-lawyer Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer.
Wilkinson and Gleklen will face a Justice Department team led by senior counsel Edward Duffy, who joined the department in 2022 from law firm Reed Smith.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, is the first major financial industry antitrust action lodged by the Biden Justice Department. The government alleged that Visa threatens merchants with higher fees for routing transactions to competitors and has stymied innovation.
Visa called the claims meritless and said it will fight them “vigorously.” The company said competition in the debit market was flourishing.
Wilkinson, Gleklen, Visa and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the legal teams.
Wilkinson was a lead defense lawyer for the National Football League in its recent win against claims that the NFL conspired to overcharge residential and commercial subscribers of the league’s “Sunday Ticket” game telecasts.
A federal judge in Los Angeles in August threw out a jury’s $4.7 billion award for the plaintiffs. The subscribers have filed an appeal.
Wilkinson also defended Microsoft in a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit, filed last year, that unsuccessfully sought to block the tech giant’s $69 billion merger with Activision. The FTC has appealed a judge’s decision in that case.
A team from Arnold & Porter has long defended Visa in ongoing litigation in Brooklyn federal court accusing the company and Mastercard of charging inflated fees to merchants that use the companies' networks to process transactions. Both companies have denied the allegations.
Gleklen's clients have included Intel, General Electric and Adobe. He represented the former Oakland Raiders professional football team in defeating an antitrust lawsuit filed by the city of Oakland over the team’s move to Las Vegas.
The Justice Department’s Visa lawsuit was assigned to U.S. District Judge John Koeltl, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1994 by then-President Bill Clinton.
In addition to presiding over several antitrust cases, Koeltl oversaw the prosecution of the late New York lawyer Lynn Stewart, who was convicted and sentenced to prison in 2010 for helping a terrorism suspect smuggle messages to his followers.
Read more:
US accuses Visa of monopolizing debit card swipes
Visa, Mastercard can likely handle settlement much bigger than $30 billion, judge says
Visa settles Discover unit's antitrust lawsuit over debit card network
Reporting by Mike Scarcella
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