J-A22035-17

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* Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

LEVY BALDANTE FINNEY & 

RUBENSTEIN, P.C. 

Appellant

v.

WELLS FARGO BANK, N.A. AND TD 

BANK, N.A.

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 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

 PENNSYLVANIA

 No. 3241 EDA 2016

Appeal from the Order Entered September 14, 2016

In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Civil Division at 

No(s): 001575 June Term 2015

BEFORE: BOWES, J., LAZARUS, J., and PLATT*, J.

CONCURRING MEMORANDUM BY BOWES, J.: FILED FEBRUARY 14, 2018

I am constrained to concur in the result reached by my learned 

colleagues. Herein, the record establishes that, although images of both the 

fronts and backs of Appellant’s checks were available online for viewing by 

Appellant’s controller, she did not examine them unless the statement and the 

account could not be reconciled. On the one occasion when the bank rejected 

Appellant’s check because the endorsement did not match the name of the 

payee, the controller recognized the handwriting on the back of the check as 

that of Mr. Cohen. Thus, there is record evidence that supports the trial 

court’s finding that Appellant’s controller reasonably could have detected Mr. 

Cohen’s unauthorized endorsements on the other checks had she examined 

them. Since prompt detection and reporting could have averted successive 

losses caused by the same wrongdoer, I can accept the result herein. 
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Nonetheless, I believe that in many cases it would be difficult, if not 

impossible, for the customer to detect an improper or forged endorsement,

even with access to a copy of both the front and back of a check. In those 

instances, the question whether the unauthorized endorsement or forgery 

should reasonably have been discovered by the customer with the information 

made available by the drawee bank would constitute a material issue of fact 

that would preclude entry of summary judgment. 

I write separately to express my consternation that Wells Fargo, the 

depository bank in this case, did not conduct even a rudimentary scrutiny of 

the checks deposited by Mr. Cohen in its ATMs (“automated teller machine”). 

On twenty-nine occasions, Mr. Cohen utilized a Wells Fargo ATM to deposit 

into his own Wells Fargo account checks payable to another, but which he 

blatantly endorsed in his own name. The depository bank admitted that its 

policy was not to compare the signature of the endorser to the name of the 

payee for any check under $50,000 deposited in its ATMs. Yet, despite that 

policy, the depository bank repeatedly warranted to the drawee, TD Bank, that 

the special endorsements were signed by the payee. TD Bank relied upon 

that warranty of presentment to debit Appellant’s account. There was no risk 

to TD Bank in doing so because the depository bank must defend and 

indemnify the drawee for any breach of its presentment warranties. The 

drawee’s thirty-day notice requirement in its deposit contract with its 

customer further reduced the exposure of the indemnitor to liability. 
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Having been required on numerous occasions to produce identification 

to a teller when cashing or depositing a check, it is disconcerting to this writer 

to learn that at least one major bank had abandoned any pretense of ensuring 

that ATM-deposited checks were similarly scrutinized. It is unclear from the 

record whether the policy of not comparing the payee and the endorser on 

any check less than a certain dollar amount deposited in an ATM is industry 

wide. Had there been evidence adduced herein that TD Bank knew of Wells 

Fargo’s policy, but debited Appellant’s accounts without further scrutiny, or 

that TD Bank has a similar ATM policy, a plausible argument could be made 

that TD Bank failed to exercise ordinary care in paying the item, and that its 

failure substantially contributed to the loss.1 Absent ordinary care, 13 Pa.C.S. 

§ 4406 provides for the allocation of the loss between the customer and the 

bank that is asserting the preclusion based on the extent of their respective 

failures to exercise ordinary care. Id. at § 4406(e). Although the Uniform 

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1 Ordinary care is defined in Article 3 as 

observance of reasonable commercial standards, prevailing in the 

area in which the person is located, with respect to the business 

in which the person is engaged. In the case of a bank that takes 

an instrument for processing for collection or payment by 

automated means, reasonable commercial standards do not 

require the bank to examine the instrument if the failure to 

examine does not violate the bank’s prescribed procedures and 

the bank’s procedures do not vary unreasonably from general 

banking usage not disapproved by this division or Division 4 

(relating to bank deposits and collections).

13 Pa.C.S. § 3103.
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Commercial Code permits provisions such as § 4406 to be modified by 

agreement, the agreement “cannot disclaim the responsibility of a bank for its 

lack of good faith or failure to exercise ordinary care.” UCC 4-103(a); 13 

Pa.C.S. § 4103; N.J.S.A. 12A:4-103. I submit that, to the extent a deposit 

agreement operates to relieve the banks of liability for a lack of ordinary care, 

it is unenforceable. 

The banking industry is founded on trust. It is my belief that banks that 

have failed to implement at least minimal safeguards against all improper or 

forged endorsements or other alterations at ATMs, not just those involving 

amounts in excess of $50,000, have failed to exercise ordinary care. 

Furthermore, a deposit agreement that effectively shifts all responsibility to

the customer to detect and report fraud and forgeries, while concomitantly 

reducing the time in which the customer must do so in order to preserve any 

remedy, smacks of bad faith. In the proper case, I recommend that we 

examine whether such banking practices and deposit agreements are contrary 

to public policy.