Ravelo Declaration: Gary Freidman's open letter.

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BankReformNow and Supportive Residents and Carers Action Group Inc say "we filed this at the SEC, Ombudsman, Parliamentary Inquiries BEFORE Ravelo and Freidman admitted they shared info. Who at the Legal Services Board thought this stary was so amazing they had to tell their mates (who reported them to the SEC). The names on the SEC TCR Reports are big names in legal ethics. Is the Legal Services Board liable under Part 7 and other laws for bignoting themselves? 09/29/2015Open Letter Responding to Judge Garaufis's Aug. 4 Opinion Re: Open Letter Responding to Judge Garaufis’s August 4, 2015 Opinion in In re American Express Anti-Steering Rules Antitrust Litig., 11-MD-2221 (E.D.N.Y.)I am writing this letter, among other reasons, for the benefit of the merchant class members who I have represented over the past 12 years in litigation against American Express – the hundreds I have met, the millions I have not, and the handful who have called asking for an explanation of the August 4, 2015 memorandum opinion and order in the above-referenced case rejecting the proposed class action settlement (the “Opinion”). In the Opinion, District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis rejected a proposed settlement that would have provided 3.4 million U.S. merchants the right – for the first time ever in this country – to use payment card surcharges (including so-called “differential surcharges” as I will explain below) to recoup onerous swipe fees and introduce price competition among credit card networks for merchant services. He rejected the settlement notwithstanding the fact that 99% of U.S. merchants have no other option for relief, insofar as the arbitration clauses in their merchant agreements – upheld by the Supreme Court in Italian Colors – mandate that they may not seek market-wide rules changes and may only seek one-on-one relief against Amex in costly arbitrations.[1] These considerations, however, did not figure into the August 4 decision because Judge Garaufis did not reject the settlement on its merits. Instead, he found my personal conduct so appalling that he felt compelled to scrap the settlement, whatever its merits. So what was that conduct really? And did it warrant scrapping a deal that would have provided historic benefits for merchants – a deal that may well never be pieced back together? I think merchants and others have a genuine interest in getting answers. INTRODUCTIONI set out 12 years ago to work for small business owners who felt abused by the big credit card companies and banks. Over the years, I’ve probably devoted 90% of my practice to their cause of reforming the notoriously broken markets for payment card acceptance in the United States. On their behalf, I developed and launched antitrust suits to obtain for merchants the right to use so-called “surcharges” and “steering” to reduce their acceptance costs and pry open the card markets to competition – efforts that were joined years later by larger merchants and, in part, the DOJ.[2] It has taken a decade of non-stop litigation, but the results have been stunning – the kind of structural reform that calls to mind the original point of class action lawsuits and the injunctive sweep of the antitrust laws. The injunctive relief in the MDL 1720 settlement forced Visa and MasterCard to rescind their longstanding and much-coveted No-Surcharge Rules. Discover rescinded its No-Surcharge Rule too. And Amex, in a proposed settlement in In re American Express Antitrust Anti-Steering Rules Antitrust Litig., 11-MD-2221 (“In re Amex ASR”), agreed to modify its anti-surcharging rules in a way that would have benefited all U.S. merchants, by allowing them to: (i) surcharge all credit cards and drive traffic to debit cards, which are extremely cheap for merchants, and/or (ii) surcharge some credit card brands while accepting other credit card brands on an effectively surcharge-free basis, as I will explain below. See gene