Credit unions, along with banks, independent ATM deployers andconvenience store operators have asked two congressional committeesfor legislation to remove an ATM disclosure regulation that hasinspired lawsuit trolls.

The organizations writing the letter included CUNA, the ABA, theAmerican Gaming Association, the ATM Industry Association, theElectronic Funds Transfer Association, the ICBA and the NationalAssociation of Convenience Stores.

In a letter this week to the House Committee on FinancialServices and the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and UrbanAffairs, the group asked lawmakers to eliminate an ATM disclosurerequirement in the Electronic Funds Transfer Act.

As currently interpreted, the law requires an ATM deployer topost a disclosure of transaction fees on both the video monitor andthe body of the ATM and makes the deployer vulnerable to litigationif there is no disclosure posted on the machine.

This, the organizations wrote, has spawned a host of lawsuits from litigants who, the letter alleged, have removedthe posted notices and then photographed the machine without themand sued.

Credit unions, banks, and convenience store owners have allfaced these lawsuits or the threat of them, and while the payoutshave generally not been large in individual cases, they havenonetheless become a nuisance and a needless expense.

The organizations argued that the part of the EFTA that hasallowed these lawsuits has outlived its usefulness.

“A physical placard fee notice may have played a useful rolewhen Congress first enacted the statutory provision in the 1990s,”the group wrote. “At that time, off-premise ATMs were relativelyuncommon, and some consumers might have been unaware that they maybe charged a fee for using an ATM. Also, many ATMs were not capableof providing the notice on the monitor.”

But since then, the groups noted, off-premise ATMs have grown tomore than half the ATMs in the country and asserted that fees havebecome an expected part of the ATM experience.

“Today, consumers expect to pay a fee at an ATM unless they areusing an ATM owned or operated by the bank or credit union wherethey have their account or their financial institution has agreedto pay for the use of the ATM,” the group added.