VISA and MasterCard are “membership corporations created, owned, governed and operated by their member financial institutions” through a joint venture, and that the issuing bank defendants “are among the banks which owned and controlled the operations of VISA and MasterCard.” (Compile 34, 37, 72, 88.) The board of directors of each network includes executives from the issuing bank defendants. (Compl.^ 34, 37, 89, 93-94.) In short, the Complaint alleges that the banks have insinuated themselves into the network defendants to such a degree that the networks are effectively part of the member banks’ operations. See Astra Oil, 344 F.3d at 281 (compelling arbitration because, in part, the plaintiff treated the defendant “as if it were a party to the charter”); Smith/Enron, 198 F.3d at 98 (<HOLDING>). As such, plaintiffs have alleged a “close
holding that the plaintiff could not show surprise when the plaintiff had received the additional terms from the defendant prior to the agreement holding that plaintiff had not stated an equal protection claim where plaintiff had not alleged that the defendant treated him differently from anyone else who both had problems with alcohol and had been arrested holding that plaintiff failed to establish pretext where plaintiff was terminated after the employer conducted an investigation into a subordinates allegations of misconduct on the part of the plaintiff and believed the allegations to be true even though plaintiff presented evidence in the lawsuit that the allegations may have been false holding acceptance of settlement estopped plaintiff from subsequent suit holding that plaintiff was estopped from arguing that the nonsignatories were distinct from the signatories because plaintiff had treated them collectively as a single unit in a previous lawsuit