Many people toss out the densely written legal notices stuffed inside their credit-card bills.
Many people toss out the densely written legal notices stuffed inside their credit-card bills.
In a startling tactic aimed at derailing potentially costly consumer class-action suits, FleetBoston and several other banks, including Citigroup Inc. and MBNA Corp., are altering their cardholder agreements to prevent customers from taking them to court. Like many other big card issuers, these banks now require consumers to bring any claim they might have to binding arbitration. The banks also say consumers are barred from combining their claims with others to form a class-action suit, the traditional way courts have handled allegations involving a large number of victims who each suffered only a small loss. What distinguishes the new clauses from many others imposed by banks in recent years is that they are retroactive. Hundreds of thousands of consumers potentially could be excluded from the pending cases.