THIS is a case we often heard about, although we have never experienced it ourselves. This is about Robert Chan, an ATM current account holder of Far East Bank and Trust Company, a local bank linked through Megalink.
Robert was accused by the Far East Bank of withdrawing the total amount of P967,000 from his account although his account only had a limit of P50,000 per day. His bank account only had a deposit that day of P198,511.70 but due to an alleged system bug of the computer system of the bank, Robert was able to withdraw 242 times with P4,000 in each ATM transaction. The machine just kept on releasing money, so the bank claims.
The transaction though was not allegedly made by Robert in a Far East Bank ATM but in a PNB Manila Pavillion branch ATM, both were served by Megalink. Robert, however, claims that he never made the withdrawals as he stayed home that whole day. He even issued later a check for P197,000 and it was only when his check bounced that he went to his bank to inquire. The Regional Trial Court found Robert liable to return the over-withdrawn money to the bank based on the Articles on Human Relations of the Civil Code (Arts. 19, 20 and 21). On appeal, the Supreme Court ruled:
“After review of the records of this case, we find the totality of evidence submitted by FEBTC insufficient to establish the crucial facts that would justify a judgment in its favor. To our mind, the fact that Chan’s account number were the ones used for the withdrawals, by itself, is not sufficient to support the conclusion that he should be deemed to have made the withdrawals.” The High Court then went on to detail the failure of the bank to prove that Robert made the withdrawals as there are many possibilities of how the withdrawals were made by persons other than Robert. As admitted by the bank, there was a system bug in the bank system. The personal identification number is on their computer. The MegaLink system also allowed withdrawals to be made in other ATMs not owned by FEBTC.
The entirety of the judgment in favor of Robert stretched far and wide in terms of failure of the bank to prove even by preponderance of evidence that Robert was the one who withdrew the money.
By and large, it is really difficult at that time for the bank to claim that the account holder should be liable for over-withdrawals. Although today, maybe just because of this case, all the banks have developed a more secure system of tracking all ATM withdrawals. And even then, the computer systems are still not perfect and are subject to hacking. The supposed cctvs installed in all ATM machines today are intended to help determine who withdraws the excess money.
This is the ruling in the case of Far East Bank & Trust Company versus Robert Mar Chan, G.R. No. 170598, October 09, 2013.
E-mail: joepallugna@yahoo.com
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