The PNC Financial Services Group Inc. has agreed to pay as much as $70 million to end a 12-year-old class-action lawsuit that it inherited when it bought a Virginia bank, according to court documents.
PNC spokesman Fred Solomon said the bank declined to comment on litigation.
About 26,000 people who took out second mortgages with the Community Bank of Northern Virginia claim the bank charged excessive fees, including fees for services it didn’t provide, and paid kickbacks to a mortgage broker firm that steered them toward the bank.
PNC assumed the liability for the class-action lawsuit when it bought Mercantile Bankshares Corp. in 2006, a year after that Baltimore-based bank bought Community Bank.
In the proposed settlement, a three-arbitrator panel will decide whether to set the settlement amount at the $24 million that PNC is proposing or the $70 million that the plaintiffs are proposing.
U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab’s order creating the panel gives it a deadline of March 31.
