Better Markets has filed a lawsuit challenging the Justice Department’s authority to unilaterally enter into the unprecedented and historic $13 billion agreement with JP Morgan Chase, which was the largest settlement with a single entity in the nation’s history by more than 300%.

The November 2013 agreement gave JP Morgan Chase – with no judicial review or approval – blanket civil immunity for years of alleged pervasive, egregious and knowing fraudulent and illegal conduct that contributed to the 2008 financial crash and the worst economy since the Great Depression.

“The Wall Street bailouts were bad enough, but now taxpayers are being forced to accept a secretive backroom deal that may well have been another sweetheart deal,” said Better Markets President Dennis Kelleher. “The Justice Department cannot act as prosecutor, jury and judge and extract $13 billion in exchange for blanket civil immunity to the largest, richest, most politically-connected bank on Wall Street. The executive branch does not have this unilateral power because it violates the constitutional requirement of checks and balances.”

“Adding insult to injury, the Department of Justice did all this in an agreement that appears to have been written more to conceal than reveal,” Kelleher said. “For example, it is using the large dollar amount to blind everyone to the reality that they have disclosed no meaningful facts about what JP Morgan Chase did, who did it, who it hurt, how much they profited and how much their clients, customers and others lost. The American people deserve, and the law requires, an independent judicial review to determine whether the settlement is fair and whether it can withstand scrutiny in the light of day.”.

Kelleher said that the financial crisis that JP Morgan Chase contributed to will ultimately cost Americans more than $13 trillion and some estimates are that it could cost every man, woman and child in the U.S. as much as $120,000.

“A monetary sanction of $13 billion seems small given it contributed to such economic wreckage and given the size of JP Morgan Chase, a bank with $2.4 trillion in assets,” Kelleher said. “The point is, however, that making an informed judgment about the substance of the agreement is simply impossible without judicial review and the disclosure of meaningful information.    “

Better Markets is asking the court to declare the agreement unlawful and to issue an injunction that would prevent the Department from enforcing the agreement until the agreement has been reviewed and approved by a court.

As part of the judicial review, a court would have the opportunity to ask the parties for more details, which would become publicly available, about JP Morgan’s violations and the extent of the damages they caused.