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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised we haven't heard more lawsuits about this in notoriously litigious America. I find it hard to believe that "we can ruin you at any time" is a sustainably fair contract term.

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In order to sue anyone, you need money. To have money, you need a bank account. Therefore, if the bank takes your account, you can’t sue the bank.

Yeah, but they’ve never done it to someone who knows someone with money?

Then they fix it and make it good.

Which can be why it can be worthwhile to file suit in small claims court or even pro se.

Because then you’re in their legal department which often at least responds.

Or you get to foreclose on the local branch.

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclo...

Find a lawyer who's willing to split the judgement 50/50. They only get paid once they win.

That only covers the incentive for the lawyer for one isolated case. But since such a lawyer will probably take many such cases (and often against the same banks), we must examine the incentives of such a lawyer more closely. The incentive of such a lawyer is to keep taking such cases, which means it is actually in the lawyer’s interest to deliberately lose some amount of such cases, in order to keep it profitable for the bank to keep debanking customers, thereby ensuring that the lawyer has enough business.

That implies the lawyers act in cahoots to try to influence this much greater body of people/power, over and against their immediate interests. It also implies they're fully crooked. It seems like an extraordinary claim (well, the former).

Lawyers aren't limited to isolated cases. Class actions exist for this exact reason and regularly lead to hundred million dollar+ payouts from banks and other large defendants for harm done to large groups of people.

I've had surprisingly decent luck with bankruptcy attorneys being willing to do small favors like unfucking these types of disputes (or at least telling you the right incantation and process to do it yourself) for free.

(Maybe it has to do with being used to dealing with clients that literally have no money.)

They will say you agreed to the terms they can close the account for whatever reason, and that receiving the balance within a week is quick enough. I doubt the courts would say otherwise. Lawyers probably won't take this case.

This is a situation where the Invisible Hand of libertarianism was supposed to manifest and gently nudge people to banks with more favorable terms in such numbers that no bank is able to do this and stay profitable.

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