Brad is an experienced commercial litigator who has focused his practice on payments law and ecommerce for 20+ years.
Brad provides a broad range of services to ISOs and Acquirers, including:
- Review, negotiation and drafting of legal agreements such as service provider, sales agent, merchant, deconversion, assignment and assumption, and portfolio purchase agreements;
- Counseling for compliance with Card Brand Rules and federal law, and responding to Card Brand investigations and regulatory inquiries;
- Advice regarding reserves handling and indemnity/collection issues;
- Litigation services, including merchant disputes and residual disputes.
Brad aggressively prosecutes 7-and-8-figure residual claims on behalf Sales Agents against unscrupulous ISOs, and has also successfully represented ISOs against Acquirers on 7-figure residual claims.
Brad also has extensive experience representing high risk Merchants in high stakes disputes with Acquiring Banks and their Third Party Agents – through informal advocacy (where possible) and litigation (where necessary) – to address improper billing, deficient reporting, early termination fee assessments, and excessive reserves withholding, as well as outright fraud and theft—successfully recovering tens of millions of dollars in wrongly seized merchant funds for his clients. Brad has also helped countless Merchants to get off MATCH.
In addition, Brad has assisted numerous ISOs, Sales Agents and Merchants to respond to Civil Investigative Demands and Civil Enforcement Actions by the Federal Trade Commission and State Attorneys General. Online marketers also turn to Brad to protect their brands and enforce their marks, ensure their compliance with consumer protection laws, pursue indemnity against rogue affiliates, resolve their affiliate marketing disputes, and defend them against private plaintiff TCPA claims.
Outside the payments space, Brad represents individuals and entities in a wide range of complex business matters, including partnership disputes and dissolutions, shareholder derivative actions, unfair competition claims, and intellectual property disputes involving trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets.
Brad is a member of the California bar, and is licensed to practice in the state and federal courts of California. He also routinely works with trusted local counsel to represent clients in arbitrations, state court actions and federal district court actions throughout the United States, including Texas, Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Utah, Washington, Arizona, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Brad is a fluent Spanish speaker.
Representative Cases
- Actively litigating a Texas state court action on behalf of an IC sales agent against an Independent Sales Organization and a former merchant client that conspired to cut the agent out of the deal. We are pursuing more than $10,000,000 in wrongfully withheld residuals from the ISO on breach of contract and theft of service causes of action, plus $20,000,000+ in punitive damages on a tortious interference cause of action against the merchant.
- Actively litigating a class action in the Southern District of New York on behalf of affected merchants against an Independent Sales Organization and its sponsor bank for breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing based on their assessment of excessive and undisclosed “enhanced chargeback” fees against their merchants.
- Obtained the release of more than $15,000,000 in Stripe Connect platform reserves and merchant funds from Stripe to the platforms and the merchants between November 2023 and April 2024 alone.
- Negotiated favorable settlement with FTC on behalf of individual defendant in FTC enforcement action seeking eight figures in consumer redress.
- Assisted in defense of individual defendant in FTC enforcement action seeking nine figures in consumer redress.
Areas Of Expertise
- Payments
- Digital Marketing
- Cybersecurity / Data Privacy
- Federal Trade Commission
Education
- JD, UCLA School of Law
- BA with Honors, Literary Theory, University of Pennsylvania
How Can We Help?
For a new world
Contact Details
Sophisticated legal counsel. Outstanding results.