They would say "we had no choice, it was a court order. The sheriff's department is responsible for the mistake."
In practice: BoA pays straight out of their pocket, sends those $3.4K to losses, and shuts this down before the media finds out. And based on the speed of votes this article is getting, they will find out.
It is an unfortunate reality for the US that you have to present as a savvy professional, but as soon as BoA is institutionally aware that there is a savvy professional who is at the point of involving a lawyer, I give them ~48 hours to make the decision internally "We're totally paying that" and a total resolution time of under two weeks.
If it were me here, I'd ask for the branch manager at my first visit immediately after getting the run-around from tier 1 CS. I give better-than-even odds that the branch manager can self-resolve this, particularly for a longer-term customer or relationship they'd otherwise have reason to care about. If the branch manager isn't super receptive to that immediately, walk into any lawyer's office and say "I want a letter written to Bank of America saying that they owe me $X plus whatever you charge for the letter." (If you for whatever reason can't afford a lawyer or can't get a lawyer to take you seriously, you can get much of the same effect by saying "Regulation E" on paper. [+])
Your lawyer won't even have to threaten a suit over this. Everyone knows the score here.
(I use to ghostwrite letters to banks. One of my weird hobbies.)
[+] Regulation E governs electronic funds transfers at US financial institutions. People who know that are very dangerous people for banks to annoy, because Regulation E contains a state machine which is very consumer-favorable, and there is an implicit threat of "I bring your operation of the state machine to the attention of a bored regulator who has no joy in their life other than opportunities to hold your feet to the fire for improperly operating state machines."
I was originally there because my credit report suddenly got $100k+ of debt added to it due to a series of errors. I researched the CRA and FDCPA and, in the process of doing so, found that forum. Many folks with different fact patterns needed relatively similar resolutions to mine or ones which were predictable based on information I had access to, so I started writing replies like "Yeah just write your bank and tell them $FOO." It turns out that the types of folks who end up deep in credit card debt often have some difficulty in banging out a quick professional letter. I didn't, and I had a lot of free time on my hands, so I drafted perhaps a few hundred letters.
This is one of my more esoteric hobbies, but it has been occasionally useful over the years.
Until he had confirmation that the court order was for the wrong person; everyone, including the branch manager would have fallen back on "It was a court order. We didn't have a choice."
Armed with the knowledge that it was a court order for a different person with a similar name but different SSN, a stern conversation with the local manager would have probably been enough.
I found the fraud hotline number, called, and explained the situation. They were very helpful, and resolved it.
And then what? People are going to just now start hating Bank Of America? I've got some news for you...
“Is the last four digit of your SSN not 5189 (not the actual digits)?”
Sounds like brunt of this mistake lies with the bank.
Unless an incredible coincidence occured, the bank did not match the SSN.
That's not a winning argument.