Stay Is Sought in Payment Card Antitrust Suit vs. Apple, Pending JPML Transfer Decision

Defendants Apple, Visa and Mastercard seek to stay all proceedings in the antitrust class action brought Dec. 14 by Mirage Wine & Spirits, a liquor store in O’Fallon, Illinois, said their memorandum Tuesday (docket 3:23-cv-03942) in U.S. District Court for Southern Illinois in East St. Louis on support of their joint motion to stay. Mirage alleges that Apple had the leverage to “disrupt” Visa's and Mastercard's dominant position in the U.S. market for point-of-sale payment card network services when it was preparing to introduce its iPhone Apple Pay feature in 2014, but instead it colluded with them to maintain their market domination (see 2312150005). The defendants are awaiting a decision by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation on whether the Mirage case should be transferred as a tag-along action to the U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Brooklyn to be coordinated with In re Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation (MDL docket 1720), said their memorandum. The panel recently issued an order conditionally transferring the Mirage action to MDL 1720, based on the “overlap” between Mirage’s allegations and the claims and issues already consolidated in MDL 1720. Apple, Visa and Mastercard seek a short stay of all deadlines pending the panel’s final resolution of where the Mirage action will be litigated, it said. Such a “discrete stay” won’t prejudice Mirage, but allowing this action to proceed, only to see it transferred to MDL 1720, will result in a “significant waste” of the court’s and parties’ resources, it said.