Based on the Royal Bank of Canada computer outage for a few days in June 2004 and customers were unable to access their money.

The program helped just 2,276 of the 2.5 million affected customers – the numbers haven’t been contested, the justice said in his ruling. 

Lead plaintiff Nicole Bergeron is seeking the payment of charges plus $200 for inconvenience and $200 in damages for each affected customer.

Source: TheStar.com – RBC computer woes spark lawsuit

Here is a story I captured at the time.  It was not entirely clear the extent of the issue, but as a minimum, it impacted Government workers but also appeared to have residual impact on payments.

But the true scale suggested in this lawsuit is serious money, amounting to 1 billion dollars!

http://www.finextra.com/topstory.asp?id=11948

04 June 2004 – Royal Bank of Canada says it will be working over the weekend to update customer accounts following a computer glitch that has caused payroll delays for thousands of Canadian workers.

The bank fell behind in processing salary deposits for Ontario government workers after running into systems problems during a software upgrade earlier this week.

After fixing the coding, RBC staff have worked round the clock trying to clear the transaction backlog caused by the failure. Millions of transactions, from direct pay deposits to bill payments, were knocked off course during the outage.

In a statement to local press, Rod Pennycook, executive vice-president at RBC, apologised for the delays, which have affected tens of thousands of civil servants and others awaiting transfers from RBC accounts.

He added: “Our systems are running well and we are making good progress. In addition, we are continuing to be extremely thorough to ensure that all transactions are correctly reflected in client account balances.”

RBC says it has 245 staff working round-the-clock shifts to update accounts and verify transactions.