Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

“It certainly makes one wonder,” Coffman said, “why Visa would secretly negotiate a settlement on behalf of its issuers that lets the two richest potentially culpable parties off the hook with little, if any, financial investment and then force its issuers to decide within two weeks whether to accept the deal.”

Added Coffman: “If I were an executive of a financial institution harmed by the Heartland data breach, I would seriously question whether Visa truly has the best interests of its network members at heart.”

Somehow, I don’t think any entity that’s worked with Visa ever thought—even briefly—that Visa has the best interests of others at heart. That’s no knock against Visa. This is the heart of the financial world, and altruism simply isn’t expected.

Another attorney involved in the class-action filing, Joe Sauder, tried to make distinctions between the Heartland case the TJX case.

“In the informational Webinars conducted by Visa, the issuers have been told that this settlement is similar to the one in the TJX data breach case, where approximately 97 percent of the financial institutions elected to participate. Visa and Heartland, however, omit some important information,” Sauder said. “The Visa settlement in TJX occurred when that case was in a very different stage in the litigation.”

In the TJX case, Sauder said, the settlement offer “was late in the case and the court had issued opinions denying the issuers’ motion for class certification and narrowing their legal claims, which meant, as a practical matter, there was no viable alternative for the issuers but to accept the settlement or file individual lawsuits. Also, prior to the settlement, TJX produced over 500,000 pages of documents.”

Sauder contrasted that with Heartland’s case. “Here, on the other hand, it is early in the case and there has been no formal discovery. There also are other important factual differences between TJX and the Heartland case,” he said. “In our view, the proposed Visa settlement clearly is designed to circumvent the safeguards inherent in the judicial process.”