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Comment by pktgen | Hacker News Reader

> 1. Those customers who were stolen from will get to participate in the mother of all class-action lawsuits. The settlement will be outlandish. Juries hate huge corporations that screw the little guy, and the lawyers on both sides know it.

Nope, since they have a mandatory binding arbitration clause. See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/business/wells-fargo-asks-....

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  "mandatory binding arbitration clause"

Wells Fargo hay have put an arbitration clause somewhere buried in their fine print; however, "binding" is what would be questioned by the courts. Probably pretty easy to refute its bind-ability, given that WF has negated and demonstrated incompetence on its side of the contract duty: safeguarding the consumer's info.

(Binding contracts require competent parties on both sides).

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitrat...

The Supreme Court has upheld binding arbitration agreements in the last few years, and unfortunately "demonstrating incompetence" isn't grounds for voiding this. There's also nothing here to indicate that customers or the bank were not "competent". There are certainly issues with the fraudulent accounts, but the entire relationship with the bank would likely be covered by the arbitration clause from the initial account setup (which the customer agreed to). Customers would have to show something along the lines of fraud in the inducement.

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