Posts Tagged ‘ Overdraft fees ’
Week Adjourned: 1.14.11
January 14th, 2011. By LucyC
Top Lawsuits
Still Bugged by Similac…Remember the Similac recall in September? Well, a class action lawsuit was filed this week over the beetle-laden baby formula.
Plaintiffs, John L. and Jennifer M. O’Neil filed the suit against Abbott Laboratories Inc. (Delaware) and Abbott Laboratories, the makers of Similac baby formula, claiming that the Similac Isomil Sensitive formula they gave their two-month old baby in September made the child sick with diarrhea. So, they wisely switched formulas on the advice of their doctor, and low and behold their infant recovered.
At the end of September, Abbott issued a voluntary recall order after small common beetles were found at its Michigan manufacturing facility. The O’Neils claim that the products were contaminated to such an extent that their baby became ill, and consequently required medical treatment.
Heads-up—the proposed class includes consumers who purchased Similac Advanced, Similac Sensitive and Similac Go and Grow in 2010 and who fed the Similac product to infant children who then subsequently became sickened.
Top Settlements
National City Bank Overdrew on Overdrafts…It looks like 2011 is going to be all about going after financial fraudsters—including banks. This latest settlement of a class action filed against National City Bank is no exception. In fact, it’s a preliminary $12 million settlement brought by Read the rest of this entry »
Week Adjourned: 12.18.10
December 19th, 2010. By LucyC
Top Lawsuits
Un-Merit-orious Behavior. Well, it just wouldn’t be Christmas without some mention of banks. After all, ’tis the season for the ringing of cash registers, credit and debit cards and overdrafts!’ This week Akron-based FirstMerit Bank is front and center, facing allegations in a recently filed class action that customers in Ohio were charged overdraft fees based “unfair and deceptive overdraft fee practices.”
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of plaintiff Donald Stevens of Crestline, Ohio, contends that such practices violate Ohio law and FirstMerit Bank’s contracts with its customers. According to the suit, FirstMerit engaged in a systematic policy of re-ordering debit card transactions from highest dollar amount to the lowest dollar amount, depleting the customer’s available funds as quickly as possible while maximizing the overdraft fees. Sound familiar?
The suit further states that the bank charged overdraft fees in situations where a customer did not overdraw a checking account and, in addition, failed to disclose or properly disclose its overdraft policies. This resulted in the bank providing misleading account balance information and often charging overdraft fees on top of overdraft fees.
Ho, Ho, Ho! It’s off to court they go!
Top Settlements
Puts the Happy Meal Lawsuit in Perspective… Lorillard Tobacco Co, certainly made an impression this week, when a jury found the company guilty of attempting to entice African American children to become smokers, by giving out free cigarettes. Wouldn’t that also come under the heading of ‘drug dealing?’
The jury hearing the case has awarded $71 million in compensatory damages to the estate of a woman who died of tobacco-related lung cancer, and her son, Willie Evans. The facts, as presented by Mr. Evans, are frightening. In the suit, he claimed that his mother, Marie Evans, was introduced to smoking as a child in the 1950s when Lorillard gave her free Newport cigarettes at the Orchard Park housing project in Boston, where she lived at the time. Apparently, she was just nine years of age when she received her first free cigarettes. Initially, she passed them on to her older sisters or traded them for candy, but by the age of 13 she had begun to smoke. Mr. Evans claimed that as a result, his mother went on to smoke for the next 40 years, until her death from lung cancer at 54. And yes, Marie did try to quit, dozens of times, according to video testimony she made before her death.
Mrs. Evans’ estate was subsequently awarded $50 million in compensatory damages and the jury also awarded her son $21 million. A hearing on punitive damages is set to take place before the end of this year. Lorillard is expected to appeal the decision. No surprise there.
DanActive Don’t. Dannon Co Inc, agreed to a $21 million settlement this week, ending charges brought by federal regulators over claims that its DanActive drink and Activia Yogurt help boost a person’s immune system and relieve irregularity. The charges allege there is not enough evidence to support Dannon’s claims currently stated on the products’ packaging and in their marketing campaigns. Hey—if it sounds too good to be true…
Attorneys General from 39 states brought the case, which is the largest attorney general consumer protection multi-state settlement ever reached with a food producer, MSNBC.com reported.
The two lead states, Oregon and Tennessee, will receive $1.06 million under the agreement and the remainder of the money will be divided among the other states.
Attention Madoff-Watchers: The estate of Jeffrey M. Picower, a philanthropist and investor from Palm Beach, has reached a settlement with the Trustee charged with recovering assets from the Madoff bankruptcy, Irving H. Picard, and the United States attorney for the Southern District, Preet Bharara, that will see a total of $7.2 billion cash made available to compensate the victims of Bernard Madoff’s global ponzi scheme. The announcement comes on the heels of the suicide of 46-year old son Mark Madoff, who hung himself in his New York loft this week.
The terms of the settlement reportedly stipulate that $2.2 billion goes to a federal victims fund to resolve a lawsuit filed last year, and $5 billion will be placed in care with the Trustee.
Picower’s widow said in a statement released to the press on December 17, “I am announcing today that we have reached a settlement with the Trustee and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and that we will return every penny received from almost 35 years of investing with Bernard Madoff, an amount totalling $7.2 billion that will go to the Madoff victims’ compensation fund. “
The settlement constituted the largest single forfeiture in American judicial history, Mr. Bharara said.
Mrs. Picower said in her statement that she was confident that her husband had not been involved in the ponzi scheme, calling it ‘deplorable’, and that returning the gains was the right thing to do.
Okee dokee. That’s it for this week. See you at the bar…
Week Adjourned: 8.6.10
August 6th, 2010. By admin
Top Class Actions
Could Say He was Over his Overdraft Fees. I think these guys deserve a Business As Usual, As Usual award. Commerce Bancshares, a Kansas City-based financial institution operating simply as Commerce Bank in the state of Missouri is being sued by a client who claims the company’s bank overdraft fees violate state law.
The plaintiff, Harold J. Joseph Jr., has accused the banking chain of manipulating the sequence of debit card purchases in an attempt to maximize the number and size of overdraft fees that they can impose.
Any of this sound familiar? Excessive bank overdraft fees lawsuits have been filed and/or settled against a variety of banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, M&T Bank and Wachovia. The lawsuits allege that banks charge excessive overdraft fees when customers’ accounts go into overdraft. They further allege that the banks use a number of unethical practices to push their accounts into overdraft, such as misrepresenting customers’ account balances and reordering debits and credits to accounts.
New regulations that will take effect by mid-August seek to rectify this problem by making overdraft protection an opt-in service and by regulating the terms of the action.
FYI: Information about Commerce Bancshares second quarter earnings were posted in a press release July 21. Those of you hit with excessive overdraft fees may find the numbers interesting…”Commerce Read the rest of this entry »
Overdraft Fee Irony: Bank Causes Overdraft, Then Charges for it
July 29th, 2010. By Hunter West
File this one under “WTF”.
Devon Donovan was just a kid with some cash and a savings account. Cash from hours worked as a lifeguard, when she could have been swimming. Hours working as a babysitter, when she could have been hanging out with her friends. When she was given money for her birthday and at Christmas, she put it away to save towards school trips.
In other words, Devon was a kid who got it right. She didn’t spend wildly. She saved her money. And when she went off to college, she kept what she assumed was a couple of hundred bucks or so in that account to save for a rainy day.
That’s what savings accounts are for.
Instead, a bank unjustly robbed her of her savings and the message was clear: we don’t care about your laudable savings habits, we couldn’t give a flying fig that you’re a kid with the right idea and we couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge such good behavior.
Legally, Citizens Bank was in the clear. But morally, is it right? Is it fair for any bank to do what Citizens Bank did to a citizen who deserved better?
Citizens Bank decided, starting in 2007, that it would begin charging a monthly fee of $5 for balances under $500. The notification, as it turned out, was a small line at the bottom of a statement from November 21st, 2006 referring to the new policy taking effect on January 8th of the New Year.
There were also new limits on monthly transactions and fees for what were described as ‘excessive transactions.’
Obviously, Devon did not see the innocuous notification on her bank statement. Besides, she Read the rest of this entry »
Week Adjourned: 2.5.10
February 5th, 2010. By LucyC
Top Class Actions
Toyota: “Moving Forward” Alright. This week is really the week of the Toyota class action. I have to be honest—I’ve lost count as to the number of lawsuits that have been filed, but I did see a report today that put the number at 29, and counting. That may just be some kind of world record.
At the heart of the issue is the now infamous sticking gas pedals. (It puts a whole new spin on the expression ‘give it some gas’—and certainly creates a little irony for Toyota’s tagline: moving forward.)
Of course, it’s not really funny, given that hundreds if not thousands or possibly millions of people will be at the very least inconvenienced by the recalls, now totalling some eight million cars—but it will also affect people’s livelihoods, and at worst there are reports of injuries.
In the highly unlikely event you’ve not heard about this issue, you can find more out all the recalls here.
Overdoing the Overdraft thing. Again. Yet another overdraft fees lawsuit was filed this week, this time the accused party is Fifth Third Bank. The lead plaintiffs in this lawsuit allege that they were illegally charged overdraft fees for purchases made on the ATM and debit cards, even when they had enough funds in their accounts to pay Read the rest of this entry »
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