Bank of America has agreed to pay $410 million to settle its part in a class action lawsuit that accuses it and more than two dozen other lenders of manipulating debit transactions in order to charge excessive overdraft fees. More than one million Bank of America customers are covered in the class action settlement.

Bank of America is the first defendant to settle in the overdraft fee class action lawsuit, which accuses nearly 30 of the nation’s banks of manipulating debit transactions to maximize the fees they could charge customers who overdrew their bank accounts. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and Citibank are among the remaining defendants in the bank overdraft fee class action litigation, which in 2009 consolidated lawsuits filed across the country.

The Bank of America overdraft fee settlement stems from several consumer complaints, including Plaintiff Ralph Tornes, who sued Bank of America for charging him nearly $500 in overdraft fees after the bank allegedly rearranged the order in which it processed his purchases. Torres claimed in his lawsuit that BofA did not process his purchases in chronological order and instead rearranged them from largest to smallest so that he had to pay three $35 overdraft fees instead of one.

U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King in Miami granted preliminary approval of the BofA overdraft fee settlement and scheduled a November 7 hearing for final approval.

The case is In re: Checking Account Overdraft Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, No. 09-md-02036.