Wells Fargo has run into trouble before with its U5 filings.

In 2011, it paid a $1 million fine to Finra for failing to submit some of the forms on time. The same year, Finra ordered the bank to pay a former broker, Maxim Minevich, $500,000 for defaming him in a U5 filing. (Wells Fargo filed a petition to vacate the award. The case and other legal matters related to it were settled this year; Wells Fargo agreed to alter the information in Mr. Minevich’s U5.)

Some former workers say that Wells Fargo used the filings as a blunt instrument, with little regard for the damage that inaccurate or imprecise allegations could inflict on people’s careers.

Ivan Jerskey, who was fired by Wells Fargo in September, is fighting the bank about its filing on his departure.

Mr. Jerskey was a financial adviser in Marin County, Calif., for high-net-worth clients. He was fired, he said, for errors related to the creation of a new account for an older client whose two daughters had trustee powers over his finances.

Mr. Jerskey opened the account after obtaining only the primary client’s signature, in violation of a bank policy — one that employees were actively told to overlook, he said — requiring the signatures of all three trustees. Mr. Jerskey also checked off a box on an account form saying that he had met all three trustees “face to face,” even though he had not.

“It never occurred to me that I was doing this incorrectly,” he said. “It was completely common practice, not just with me but with everybody at the branch. That’s how we were told to do it by several managers and departments.”