“NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) has won tentative approval of a $410 million settlement of lawsuits accusing it of charging excessive overdraft fees to roughly 1 million customers.
U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King in Miami granted preliminary approval for the accord on Monday and scheduled a November 7 hearing to consider final approval, court records show.
Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank by assets, is among more than two dozen U.S., Canadian and European lenders that had been named as defendants in the class-action litigation, which in 2009 consolidated lawsuits filed across the country.
JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) are among the other defendants.
Critics say overdraft fees, which are typically $25 or $35, disproportionately burden customers with lower incomes or low account balances.
In their November 2009 complaint, customers accused Bank of America of routinely processing debit transactions from largest to smallest rather than in chronological order.
They said this caused account balances to fall faster, sometimes causing customers to rack up hundreds of dollars of fees, even if they had been overdrawn by just a few dollars.”
If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on Twitter
