NEW YORK – A federal court approved a $410 payment by Bank of America Corp to settle lawsuits accusing it of charging excessive overdraft fees to roughly 1 million customers.
BofA 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, Citigroup and Wells Fargo are among the other defendants.
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.
