MasterCard faced a class action lawsuit regarding ATM fees, the case came up in 2011 to 2024 and has since been resolved ending it effectively. In the lawsuit, the plaintiff accused MasterCard of conspiring to inflate ATM fees which resulted in its clients paying more for the ATM transactions.
The MasterCard Lawsuit
The MasterCard lawsuit was not so different from the other lawsuits companies have been facing in the recent times. In the lawsuit, MasterCard was accused of a conspiracy to inflate ATM fees which ended up limiting competition between the available ATM networks in the market.
The MasterCard Lawsuit Settlement
Unlike other lawsuits in the past, the MasterCard lawsuit did not go all the way to the final judgement in court. The two conflicted parties in the lawsuit agreed to settle the case out of court with MasterCard agreeing to pay a total sum of $197 million to settle the lawsuit filed against it. The plaintiff in the case agreed to this settlement and decided to end the case without proceeding to the court’s final judgement.
The settlement money from the lawsuit will be distributed to all clients who were affected by the MasterCard inflated ATM fees and will be channelled to all people who used MasterCard ATM services between the years of 2007 to 2024. The decision to settle the lawsuit by MasterCard is something that many people have lauded given that it speaks a lot to corporate responsibility by companies in business.
Whether MasterCard will accept responsibility for the charges levelled against them or not is not cleat but one can only assume that a company can only to settle a lawsuit if they think they are guilty of the accusations against them. However, just by agreeing to settle the lawsuit does not necessarily mean that defendant is guilty. Sometimes companies can decide to settle lawsuits just so to end a protracted legal battle against the plaintiff which might cast a cloud of uncertainty over their business operations.
If this was the case with the lawsuit between plaintiff and MasterCard is still unclear at this point given that the finer details regarding the case are still unknown. By this decision, MasterCard and the plaintiff ended the lawsuit between them effectively.
The Current State of the MasterCard Lawsuit
The MasterCard lawsuit is in its final stages and likely to end any time soon. What is remaining is for the court to approve the lawsuit settlement and end the lawsuit completely. The MasterCard lawsuit has been ongoing for many years now actually since 2011 and its only important that the lawsuit is ended to prevent further uncertainty from the lawsuit.
The success of the MasterCard lawsuit speaks extensively to how much companies can sometimes exploit their clients without being noticed. There have been many class action law suits against companies in the past which range from deceptive marketing to other crimes committed by companies. What is more disturbing is that sometimes such acts go on for long unnoticed allowing innocent clients to continue suffering in the hands of greedy companies.
