Lawsuit filed over missing safe-deposit box at Huntington bank
YOUNGSTOWN
A Pennsylvania woman has sued Huntington National Bank for more than $125,000 because she said bank officials told her that her safe-deposit box was no longer there.
Carole McIntyre-Weiszer of Crescent Township said bank officials notified her in 2004 that her box would be moved from a branch at 7235 South Ave., which was closing, to a branch at 3960 South Ave.
Sometime in 2007, she accessed her box at 3960 South Ave., but, when she went there in April 2011 and presented her key, she was told her box was no longer at the bank, the suit says.
The branches were part of Sky Bank, which was acquired by Huntington in September 2007.
The suit, which demands a jury trial, was filed Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court and assigned to Judge Maureen A. Sweeney.
Atty. David J. Betras, who filed the suit, said he doesn’t know if the box was lost or stolen, but its disappearance was listed as a grand theft on a Boardman police report. The case was assigned to Detective Greg Stepuk, who could not be reached to comment.
“All we know is she has a key and no safe-deposit box,” Betras said.
McIntyre-Weiszer said she had the box for 20 years, but bank officials told her in April 2011 that they didn’t know what happened to it.
Dennis Ginty, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Commerce, said his department’s division of unclaimed funds receives safe-deposit box contents from banks three years after the box leases expire.
However, he said the department could find no record of McIntyre- Weiszer’s box contents having been transferred to the state’s possession.
Bill Eiler, Huntington’s Pittsburgh-based regional vice president for public relations, said he would have no comment because the issue is a legal matter.