Henry v. PNC Bank, N.A.

31 Pa. D. & C.5th 101
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Alleghany County
DecidedJuly 8, 2013
DocketNo. GD-10-022974
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 31 Pa. D. & C.5th 101 (Henry v. PNC Bank, N.A.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Alleghany County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Henry v. PNC Bank, N.A., 31 Pa. D. & C.5th 101 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2013).

Opinion

WETTICK, J.,

— The preliminary [103]*103objections of PNC Bank seeking dismissal of each of the six counts within plaintiff’s amended class action complaint are the subject of this opinion and order of court.

Plaintiff, Candace H. Henry, is a former customer of PNC who was provided with a checking account and debit card. She alleges that she was the victim of a practice in which PNC maximized overdraft charges (1) by waiting until the end of a business day to determine whether the account balance in a customer’s checking account was sufficient to cover all debit transactions from the end of the prior business day to the end of the current business day and (2) by using a high-to-low posting where there were multiple transactions within this period thereby maximizing the overdraft fees whenever the total charges against the account at the end of the business day exceeded the account balance.1

EXAMPLE: The balance of the customer’s checking account as of 12:01 A.M. on Wednesday is $3,000; debit card transaction 1 at 7:00 A.M.-$7.27; transaction 2 at 8:15 A.M.-$4.21; transaction 3 at 12:37 P.M.-$21.16; Transaction 4 at 1:01 P.M.-$3.13; transaction 5-$2,989.00 at 3:30 P.M. (payment of tuition).

If the account was posted in chronological order, the customer would be charged for one overdraft. If the account was posted from lowers to highest at the end of the business day, the customer would be charged for [104]*104one overdraft. However, if the account was posted from highest to lowest at the end of the business day, the customer would be charged for four overdrafts. Under this third scenario, PNC would be assessing overdraft charges on four transactions for which the actual funds in the customer’s account were sufficient at the time of each transaction to cover the debits submitted for payment.

The situation is exacerbated when numerous debit card transactions occur on Saturday through Monday. PNC treats this three-day period as one business day. Consequently, if the total transaction amount for this three-day period exceeds the balance of the account as of 11:59 P.M. on Monday, the number of defaults will be based on the posting of all debits submitted over the three-day period in highest to lowest order.

In plaintiff’s first amended class action complaint, plaintiff describes three overdraft incidents:

Incident 1-At the close of business on May 19, 2010, plaintiff had an account balance of $160.34. On May 20, 2010, PNC posted three charges to plaintiff’s account: a check for $160.00 and two debit card transactions, one for $8.05 and the other for $5.93. PNC approved the two debit card transactions before it received the check. However, at the end of the business day, PNC posted the check for $160 before posting the $8.05 and $5.93 debits. The result was that plaintiff’s account was charged overdraft fees totaling $72.00 for $13.98 in overdrafts. If PNC had deducted the debit charges when it received notice of them and in chronological order, plaintiff would have been [105]*105charged only one overdraft fee when the $160.00 check was posted (¶¶39-41, plaintiff’s amended complaint).

Incident 2-At the end of the day on May 20, 2010, plaintiff had a balance of-$13.64 in her checking account. However, in the early hours of May 21, 2010, PNC received a direct deposit into plaintiff’s account in the amount of $641.55. It received that money before the opening of the business day on May 21, 2010. Had her account been credited with those funds at the time PNC received them, the account balance would have been $627.91 before any additional transactions could be posted to her account. However, PNC deducted a debit card transaction before crediting plaintiff’s account for the direct deposit, resulting in another overdraft fee (¶42, plaintiff’s amended complaint).

Incident 3-On June 11, 2010, plaintiff began the day with a balance of $84.23. During the day, she deposited $320.00 in her account resulting in over $400.00 in available funds in the account on that date. However, plaintiff incurred four overdraft fees totaling $144.00 on $336.68 in total charges. But for PNC’s resequencing and delayed deposits policies, plaintiff would have incurred fewer or no overdraft fees on that day (¶43, plaintiff’s amended complaint).

Each of the counts in plaintiff’s six-count complaint is based, wholly or partially, on PNC’s practice of posting all debit transactions only at the end of the business day and processing them from the highest to lowest amount, thereby maximizing the number of overdraft fees charged [106]*106to the customer.

I now consider PNC’s preliminary objections to each of plaintiff’s six causes of action.

I. BREACH OF CONTRACT AND THE DUTY OF GOOD FAITH AND FAIR DEALINGS

I initially begin with plaintiff’s third cause of action based on allegations that PNC has breached its contractual obligations to plaintiff by posting debits only at the end of the business day in high-to-low order.

PNC contends thatthis cause of actionmustbe dismissed because plaintiff executed writings which authorized the posting of all debit transactions at the end of a business day, using a high-to-low posting sequence. In support of this contention, PNC primarily relies on three writings, herein designated as writings A, B, and C.

WRITING A

PNC relies on the first page of the twenty-seven-page, single-spaced (and not indexed) account agreement for personal checking, savings and money market accounts (“account agreement”), exhibit 1 to plaintiff’s amended complaint, which directs the customer to refer to the following:

You should also refer to certain other documents for terms and conditions relating to your Account, including PNC Bank’s:

(i) Consumer Schedule of Service Charges and Fees;
[107]*107(ii) Funds Availability Policy;
(iii) Substitute Check Policy Disclosure;
(iv) Consumer Electronic Funds Transfer Disclosure Statement; and,
(v) PNC Bank Online Banking and Bill Pay, Online Banking Transfer Funds and PNC Payment Services, and/or Online Bill Pay Services Agreement for Information concerning the use of these services (if you have selected any of these services);
(vi) Overdraft Protection Agreement; and
(vii) The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. Consumer Information Privacy Principles.

WRITING B

PNC relies on the following three paragraphs of the account agreement at pages 3 and 4 under the heading withdrawals'.

Paragraph 3

Your account may be debited on the day an item is presented bv electronic or other means, or at an earlier time based on notification received bv us that an item drawn on vour account has been deposited for collection in another financial institution. We are required to permit a withdrawal only if you have sufficient available funds in your Account to cover the whole amount of the withdrawal. A determination of your account balance [108]

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Bluebook (online)
31 Pa. D. & C.5th 101, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/henry-v-pnc-bank-na-pactcomplallegh-2013.