MasterCard Inc. agreed to give documents related to investigations of interchange in other countries to the plaintiffs in the consolidated merchant interchange lawsuit, but Visa said it does not have the authority to do so.
Visa U.S.A. Inc. of San Francisco had referred the plaintiff's request to Visa International, the umbrella group for the six regional Visa associations. At a hearing on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Randall A. Hack, a lawyer for Visa International, told Judge James Orenstein that his client does not have jurisdiction over Visa Canada and Visa Europe to turn over all the documents.
Craig Wildfang of Robbins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told the judge at the hearing that because John Philip Coghlan, the president and chief executive of Visa U.S.A., sits on Visa International's board, he can influence that entity's decisions.
Judge Orenstein said that if the two sides did not resolve the matter before the next hearing on Nov. 7, he would rule on the matter.
On another matter, Judge Orenstein tentatively set Feb. 15 as the date by which Visa, MasterCard and the defendant banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp., must produce "objective coding," or relevant material gleaned from previous cases.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs had asked that the defendants complete sifting through the millions of pages of documents and present the coding by Nov. 17.
