ATM Sticker Regulation Repealed (Maybe)

In July, I posted about a federal regulation that had given some attorneys a way to loot the banking industry . The law required ATMs to advise users of transaction fees both through stickers and through on-screen or printed warnings—and it empowered consumers to sue for substantial damages if the stickers were missing. The law has now changed, and there may be no more such lawsuits.

Last week, President Obama signed a bill repealing the statutory provision about the stickers ; the statute now discusses only the on-screen notice . (As of now, the old text is still at the second link, but if you compare the two documents, you can see that the part about the sticker has been removed.)

There is one ambiguity, however. Like many provisions of federal statutes, the clause about the sticker was written in terms of requiring a regulator to make a regulation. So the effectiveness of the repeal may hinge on whether the regulator involved (the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) wants to preserve the sticker requirement, whether it can find some other legal basis to do so, and how the removal of the explicit statutory requirement affects the application of the part of the law that provides for damage awards.

H/T Bank Lawyer's Blog and Walter Olson .

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