Court guts ruling against bank

Sorry I have to use the L.A. Times (home of Andrew Malcolm's right-wing rants) as a source again, but it'll have to suffice.

This story is from early this month, but I had to put it on the backburner for weeks.

It seems like lately the California Supreme Court has taken a few cues from Bush's jurists by making up law as it goes along. This story is another like that.

California's high court has overturned a $1,000,000,000 jury award against Bank of America over its confiscatory fees.

A jury had ruled in 2004 that the bank had violated state law by taking fees from customers' direct deposit accounts they had for Social Security benefits. Over 1,000,000 poor, disabled, and elderly Californians had been affected by the illegal bank fees. Some of them lost 20% of their benefits in a single day just because of these fees.

But now the California Supreme Court has dashed this ruling to smithereens.

No apparent reason. Just because.

The law is very clear. The bank fees were illegal. The California Supreme Court pulled its decision favoring the bank clean out of its anus.

Even the court admitted that banks' policy of posting each day's checks in order from largest to smallest hurts the most financially troubled customers. Banks do this because they deem larger transactions more important.

The poor are always forced to be the last in line, aren't they?

If banks want to steal 20% of disabled Americans' money, then you know what? The American public should get its bailout money back.

(Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bank-america2-2009jun02,0,4121940.story)