Court to rule on bank fee case in October
ARULING on the landmark case over bank fees has been set for October 1. At that time, the court is expected to rule whether banks have a right to charge fees for certain services or whether more evidence will have to be presented to make a determination.
The case brought by Fitz Jackson against Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica BNS, in July 2023, is being heard in chambers before Justice Crescencia Brown-Beckford. The judge heard further submissions during a full day’s sitting on February 28.
Jackson sued BNS over a service charge he paid to cash a cheque in 2019. He contends that he was entitled to the full face value of the cheque, $2,500, after the bank withheld $385 as service fee.
The l egal team representing Jackson, attorneys Anthony Williams and Annette Henry, are pleading for a summary judgment and the striking out of BNS’ defence in light of the submissions that have been made for BNS and the Bank of Jamaica.
“We put up some good arguments to the court and, to be clear, we’re asking for a summary judgment in that we’re asking the court to stop the case at this stage,” Williams told the Financial Gleaner. “We await the ruling,” he said.
Jackson, the opposition member of parliament for St Catherine Southern, has been on a yearslong crusade to get financial institutions, in particular commercial banks, to reduce or abolish fees charged on their customers. He has submitted a private member’s bill regarding the amount of fees that financial institutions are allowed to charge.
Jackson has also filed a private member’s motion saying bank customers “are losing enormous amounts of money from their accounts without recourse and that the public is at the mercy of the banks because of the widespread malfunctioning of ATMs,” he told the Financial Gleaner. It calls on the central bank to address the issue, he said.
“The bottom line is that members of the public are losing their money through financial institutions; the banks are taking no responsibility for it and are just sending people out to pasture, so to speak,” Jackson said.
He also said he has been enduring “great difficulty in getting the leader of government business in Parliament to agree and stick to a schedule for debating the motions.”