From what I’ve read, the issue appears to be that Wells Fargo is claiming that when a customer signs an arbitration agreement with the bank, that covers everything; not just a single account creation, it governs all interactions between that customer and the bank in all matters. The customer has agreed that as a customer of the bank, they’ve given up the right to sue and must instead go through arbitration.
Remember that Wells Fargo has already been hit with big fees over the fraudulent creation of accounts (not remotely big enough, IMHO, but big by the standards of you or I). Everyone agrees they’ve done wrong by opening those accounts without approval from the customers. All we’re talking about here is about whether an arbitration agreement that truly was signed by the customer once applies to everything they do with the bank, or only to actions taken at the same time at which the arbitration agreement was signed. And to be honest, we can’t really know that without actually reading the text of the agreement, which nobody has yet provided; for all we know, these agreements could say almost anything. (But that the judges have apparently been convinced by WF’s logic probably lets us guess at what they say)
(And once again, I’m not saying that I think Wells Fargo’s claims have any merit, or that arbitration agreements are a thing that should even exist. I’m just trying to pick through the available facts, as provided by the media, to arrive at something that doesn’t make anybody in the story sound like a complete idiot or mustache-twirling cartoon villain.)
