Cogan Weighs Visa Mastercard Settlement Judge Approval in Brooklyn
Judge Brian Cogan is weighing visa mastercard settlement judge approval in Brooklyn as the injunctive-relief portion of the antitrust case moves back before the court. The class covers about 12 million merchant plaintiffs, including U.S. businesses that accepted Visa or Mastercard-branded cards between Jan. 1, 2004, and Jan. 25, 2019.
$5.5 billion is the size of the merchant settlement tied to the 2018 deal with Visa and Mastercard, which partially resolved claims that the networks charged excessive interchange fees when customers paid with credit or debit cards. For merchants, the practical issue is not the headline number alone; it is how the remaining court-supervised steps will continue to govern payments, reporting and distributions tied to those claims.
Brooklyn court keeps control
2019 brought final court approval for the damages portion of the case, but the litigation never ended there. A separate injunctive-relief component is still pending in Brooklyn, and Cogan is now considering preliminary approval of a settlement for that piece, keeping the court at the center of how the long-running dispute is wound down.
February 2025 was the claims deadline, after plaintiffs sent claim forms to about 18.6 million merchants. That filing universe was far larger than the about 12 million-member class, a gap that shows how broad the notice process ran and how many businesses were pulled into the claims system even if they did not ultimately join the class.
Reporting fight over claims
Last month, Marutollo denied a February motion to compel detailed monthly reporting. Cascade Settlement Services, which said it represents about 9,000 claims against the networks, had sought more frequent disclosure, and the court instead directed class counsel and Cascade’s lawyer to negotiate periodic public reporting that would give better insight into Epiq’s processing of claims.
February also brought the first disbursement, one year after the claims deadline. That timing matters for merchants waiting on cash flow, because the claims process has moved in stages rather than in a single lump-sum payout.
$414 million has been paid to about 598,000 merchants from an initial distribution that Cogan approved late last year. The plaintiffs have now asked him to approve a second disbursement totaling at least $182 million for about 84,000 claimants, which puts the next round of money back under judicial review while the broader injunctive-relief settlement remains before him.
