Priceless: The Case that Brought down the Visa/Mastercard Bank Cartel by Lloyd Constantine (Kaplan Publishing, $26.95, 9781607144564/1607144565, October 6, 2009).

Lloyd Constantine represented Wal-Mart, the Limited, Sears and others in a federal antitrust lawsuit against VISA and MasterCard filed in 1996. Dubbed the Merchants' Case for short (the matter evolved into a class action involving five million merchants), it alleged that VISA and MasterCard, a joint venture owned by U.S. banks, "operated as a bank cartel that had monopoly power in the credit card market . . . [and] used their monopoly power to dominate the newer debit card market." Constantine's highly informative book covers the long, tumultuous history of that landmark case with passion.

Constantine starts with the nitty-gritty, discussing a decisive event for initiating the lawsuit. When Wal-Mart discovered it had no negotiating room with VISA and MasterCard, it was not happy that its status as the Biggest Customer cut no bargaining ice and went in search of legal counsel. Constantine, with experience in lawsuits against VISA and MasterCard for related collusive practices, developed an elegant strategy for the case and was hired. As he makes clear, once you land the clients, then you hunker down to the daily legal grind to win the case--in this instance, defending 350 depositions, analyzing 54 expert reports and attending so many hearings that judges become more familiar to you than your own family.

Constantine is especially adept at showing that factors beyond anybody's control affect the way a case plays out. Assembled in one courtroom are a huge number of very-big egos; various parties with vastly different goals; judges making sometimes curious rulings; and expert witnesses introducing odd spins into the case. With so many unpredictable players and so much at stake, anything can happen. One moment of high drama occurs when a witness for the defense blurts out an unexpected piece of information that supports the plaintiff's claim of collusion and signals the judge that central facts have been purposely misrepresented to the court. Another bombshell drops when an expert witness admits that he didn't write the report he signed and, in fact, disagrees with many of the assertions made in it.

As soon as a jury is seated in 2003, another surprise happens: the parties settle the case. Constantine's team prevailed in most of its claims; the settlement agreement broke up the cartel, committed a $3.05 billion cash payment to merchants and required redesign of debit and credit cards. Yet Constantine is frank about what he hoped for but didn't get. And in his eloquent argument on the importance of antitrust law, it turns out it's not always about the money.--John McFarland

Shelf Talker: Aspiring litigators, fans of Court TV and everyone holding a VISA or MasterCard will be fascinated by this candid, often bare-knuckled account of one of the largest antitrust cases in recent years.