Judicial decision on bank fees could harm consumers in Amazonas

Moral damages

The understanding harms consumers, as the IRDR has a generic nature, covering not only tariffs and baskets

Manaus (AM) – The decision of the Court of Justice of Amazonas (Tjam), this week, in which it once again admits the Incident of Resolution of Repetitive Demands (IRDR) to analyze whether or not compensation for moral damage is applicable in the case of illegal tariff discounts on account banking, harms several consumers throughout Amazonas, especially vulnerable people, the elderly, retired, humble and low-income, in the opinion of the president of the Association of Amazonian Consumer Defenders Lawyers (AADCAM), Nicolas Gomes.

The judgment, based on a report by judge João Simões, pointed out that the understanding in the Incident of Uniformization of Jurisprudence carried out within the scope of the Class of Uniformization of Special Civil Courts of Amazonas is established in the sense that “the undue discount on the basket of banking services does not constitute the occurrence of moral damages”.

According to the lawyer, the understanding harms consumers, as the IRDR has a generic nature, it covers not only tariff and basket, but insurance and capitalization bonds, items that consumer lawyers verify every day as there is tying and undue discounts not contracted in the account of Amazonians.

“This IRDR, basically, is an umbrella for banks to continue making these types of undue discounts on the consumer’s account. Other than that, it greatly harms the legal profession, which directly depends on this type of action to survive”,

declares.

For the consumer specialist, the decision, which only affects the Special Courts, aims to provide goals for Tjam.

“The judge who set this IRDR, instituted it exclusively to reduce the court’s goal, that is, to suspend these types of processes and reach the goal, harming an entire class of lawyers who depend on this matter, since it is a daily matter in the courts of the Judiciary. ”,

states.

What would be IRDR?

According to the lawyer, the IRDR is a procedural instrument that allows judges and judges, the court in general, to understand a certain matter in a uniform manner. “So that there are no divergent decisions in order to preserve legal certainty”, explains the lawyer.

What does the magistrate say?

“It has been repeatedly decided by this Honorable Court that bank fee discounts not provided for in a rule published by the Central Bank of Brazil and/or not authorized in a contractual term constitute an unlawful act and give rise to the responsibility of the financial institution for the repeated overpayment. However, regarding the appropriateness of compensation for moral damages, as a possible logical and presumed result of the conduct perpetrated by the financial institution (moral damages in re ipsa), there is a significant variation in understanding by the various jurisdictional bodies of this Court”,

stated the rapporteur in his vote.

Other decisions

In recent years, Tjam has defined similar decisions such as this one from October 31, 2023. In August of this year, the court admitted IRDR on charges for consumer bank loans. In 2022, IRDR was judged to be valid and defined theses on payroll credit cards.

OAB and consumer protection were called

The Brazilian Bar Association Amazonas Section (OAB/AM) and the consumer control and defense bodies have already been called to intervene in favor of consumers and the legal profession, as revealed by Dr. Nicolas.

“The latter has been severely penalized due to the actions of magistrates against predatory litigation, in a clearly generic way, placing everyone on a scale of manufacturers of unfounded demands, which is not true, according to impartial data and studies”,

score.

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