Michelle A. Peters

Michelle A. Peters is an attorney at Constantine Cannon, and has practiced with the firm since February 2000. Michelle’s concentration lies primarily in the areas of antitrust counseling and litigation and general commercial litigation. She has vast expertise in the payments industry.

Key Highlights:

• Among the team of lead counsel that represented Walmart, Sears, Limited, Safeway, Circuit City, three merchant trade associations and a certified class of more than five million merchants challenging Visa’s and Mastercard’s Honor All Cards rules in the case captioned In re Visa Check/MasterMoney Antitrust Litigation. The case successfully resulted in an historic $3.05 billion antitrust settlement and injunction valued at upwards of $87 billion on behalf of U.S. merchants.
• Among the team of plaintiffs’ counsel that represented Discover Financial Services, DFS Services, LLC and Discover Bank in Discover Financial Services v. Visa U.S.A. Inc., which successfully resulted in a $2.75 billion antitrust settlement stemming from Discover’s allegations of damages caused by Visa’s and MasterCard’s now-defunct rules that precluded financial institutions that offered Visa and/or MasterCard cards from also offering Discover cards to consumers.
• Member of the legal team that represented the Merchants Payments Coalition in its submissions to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System concerning Regulation II (Debit Card Interchange Fees and Routing), more commonly known as the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
• Member of the legal team representing a group of more than 60 merchants, including many of the largest in the U.S., challenging payment card network practices in the case captioned In re Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation.

Michelle has extensive research experience in the payments industry, business development, federal and state antitrust law, commercial law, and consumer protection law, and federal civil and appellate practice and procedure. She is consistently called upon by the firm as the “go to” fact finder.

Michelle graduated cum laude from the Syracuse University College of Law in 1999, and received a Certificate of Specialization from the Family Law and Social Policy Center. During law school, she was a member of the Women’s Law Caucus, the Family Law Society, and the Law Student Senate, from which she was awarded a Senate Citation for service. As a student attorney in her law school’s Children’s Rights and Family Law Clinic, Michelle successfully represented children and their families in child custody and support, school discipline, and special education cases, and appeared on behalf of clients in family court and at school district hearings.

In 1996, Michelle graduated cum laude from the University of Delaware in the top 5% of her class, with a major in Criminal Justice and a minor in Psychology. She was awarded Dean’s List status every semester, as well as membership in the Alpha Kappa Delta Honor Society and the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.

Michelle was admitted to practice in January 2000 before the Bar of the State of New York. She also is a member of the Bars of the United States District Courts for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York.