On July 29, 2013, Judge King, from the Southern District of Florida, approved a $55 million settlement between US Bank and a proposed class of over one million customers of US Bank, putting to rest a class action accusing the bank of manipulating debit card transactions to collect higher overdraft fees.
The suits making up this class action were filed in 2009 alleging that the bank changed the order of customer’s debit card transactions from largest to smallest in order to maximize overdraft fees.These cases were consolidated before Judge King in Florida by the multidistrict litigation panel (“MDL”). The class is made up of bank customers in 23 states that opened accounts between 2003 and 2010. Stoll Berne was appointed as one of the class counsel for the class. A copy of the Order approving the settlement can be found by clicking: US Bank Overdraft Case.
The proposed agreement follows a number of other settlements in the MDL against more than 30 different banks that were reported on this blog, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and PNC Bank. The actions accused the banks of cashing in on excessive overdraft fees by ordering debit transactions from largest to smallest so larger transactions would empty customer accounts and smaller transactions would then trigger multiple overdraft charges.
Bank of America, JPMorgan and PNC settled out of the MDL for $410 million, $110 million and $90 million respectively. RBS Citizens agreed to pay $137 million, and TD Bank agreed to pay $62 million.
