Liability Waiver on Lost/Stolen Checks
by Ken Golliher, BOL Guru Guru BIOS
Question: Do you have a sample agreement that I could have my customers sign when they want to place a stop payment on a book or series of lost/stolen checks on their account? I am trying to find something that they could sign that would release us from liability, once the stop payment falls off, when the customer does not want to do a close and reopen.
Answer: Reprise of prior post
All the thief needs to do is take one of the stolen checks and use it as a "breeder document" to order 200 more with higher numbers from an ad in the Sunday paper. The fraudulent items will be paid and the loss is the bank's.
If the customer does not want to close the account, some banks have the customer sign a "hold harmless" agreement where the customer accepts responsiblity for any fraudulent items presented. My perspective is that simply makes it worse; I have had clients where the customer's attorney insisted the customer did not understand the risks involved. The lawyer maintained that the bank had overreached the customer by allowing him to sign such a document when the bank clearly understood the risks and the customer did not. Frankly, I tend to agree.
Close account A. Open account B. Do whatever you can to reduce the impact on the customer, but do not knowingly accept the risk of loss.
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