This appeared in today's USA Today, the print edition. No corresponding version in the online edition, but if you don't believe me just go buy today's paper, page 25A. Chase is settling a class action lawsuit out of court that has to do with a computer error that occured in January 1999. Here's the description from the brief of what happened.

Description of the lawsuit - This class action lawsuit was filed in January 1999 by [the plaintiffs] against Chase.

The lawsuit involves motor vehicle leases made with or assigned to Chase where the lessee had agreed to make lease payments through automatic withdrawls from the lessee's bank account. Plaintiffs alleged in their Complaint that Chase [violated various laws and practices]

[Chase says they did absolutely nothing wrong, but has decided to settle.]

Summary of the Proposed Settlement - [skip a bit]

Equitable Relief - Chase has modified its leasing customs, policies, and practices and changed its computer systems so that effective May 12, 1999, lease payments are no longer automatically withdrawn after the lease month date.

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So what right? Well, Chase Manhatten had a computer problem (occuring incidentely around January 1999) that deducted extra money from people's checking accounts without their permission. This problem was not fixed until May 12, 1999; not, as Cory might say, within oh two or three hours. Meanwhile, the program is taking money out of various people's accounts, checks are bouncing, credit ratings are taking a nosedive, peoples finances are negatively affected until Chase fixes it's systems. And thats just one problem. Everything else is working just fine. This plus Chase's losing $40 billion dollars in bonds leads me to believe that all is not well in their IT department. An y2k is jsut around the corner.

-- John Ainsworth (ainsje00@wfu.edu), December 01, 1999

Answers

Bout time to max those credit cards out eh??

-- Porky (Porky@in.cellblockD), December 01, 1999.

I got some Put Options Contracts riding on CMB Chase Manhattan Bank! When there is a crash, the banks will go down big time!

-- freddie (freddie@thefreeloader.com), December 02, 1999.

Thanks John for the post.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), December 02, 1999.