Veronica Gutierrez v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Bank fees, like taxes, are ubiquitous. And, like taxes, bank fees are unlikely to go away any time soon. The question we consider here is the extent to which overdraft fees imposed by a national bank are subject to state regulation.

At issue is a bookkeeping device, known as “high-to-low” posting, which has the potential to multiply overdraft fees, turning a single overdraft into many such overdrafts. The revenue from overdraft fees is massive. Between 2005 and 2007, Wells Fargo Bank (“Wells Fargo”) assessed over $1.4 billion in overdraft fees. Disturbed by the number of overdrafts caused by small, everyday debit-card purchases, Veronica Gutierrez and Erin Walker (collectively “Gutierrez”) sued Wells Fargo under California state law for engaging in unfair business practices by imposing overdraft fees based on the high-to-low posting order and for engaging in fraudulent business practices by misleading clients as to the actual posting order used by the bank.

The district court found that “the bank’s dominant, indeed sole, motive” for choosing high-to-low posting “was to maximize the number of overdrafts and squeeze as much as possible out of what it called its ‘ODRI…