Class Action Claims Huntington National Bank Unlawfully Refuses to Reimburse Fraudulent Charges

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The Huntington National Bank has been named in a proposed class action that claims it unlawfully fails to reimburse unauthorized payments deducted from customers’ accounts unless accountholders purchase the bank’s fraud-prevention services. The case claims the bank’s policy of requiring customers to purchase an additional service as a condition of receiving benefits to which they should already be entitled violates the Bank Holding Company Act’s (BHCA) Anti-Tying provision.

“The purpose of the Anti-Tying provision of the BHCA is to prohibit anticompetitive practices which require bank customers to accept or provide some other service or product in order to obtain the bank product or services they desire,” the complaint reads.

In other words, Huntington unlawfully demands that customers purchase separate fraud-prevention services in order to be reimbursed when the bank covers a fraudulent charge on the account holder’s behalf, a service the lawsuit argues Huntington is already obligated to provide under the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, an Ohio commercial cleaning business, alleges it noticed the bank had paid out four unauthorized checks the company’s business checking account totaling $3,973.96 in late November 2014. Upon notifying Huntington of the fraudulent charges, the plaintiff allegedly received a letter from the bank that noted that “reasonable care was not used in declining to use [Huntington’s] Check Positive Pay/Reverse Positive Pay services, which substantially contributed to the making of the forged item(s).”

The lawsuit argues that Huntington was obligated to debit the plaintiff’s account “only as directed by [the plaintiff]” and was therefore liable for the “clearly unauthorized checks.” According to the case, the defendant’s apparent attempt to skirt its liability for the charges is a violation of the UCC and state law.