CUNA said Thursday it is urging a West Coast federal appeals court to uphold a lower court decision defining how credit unions and ATM vendors qualify for immunity from liability for missing "fee decals" and the lawsuits they have spawned.

In the "friend of the court" brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, CUNA argued that the court should uphold that "ATM operators are not required to establish the identity of the vandal or third party that removes an affixed fee decal in order to establish immunity from civil liability under the safe harbor defense" under federal law.

CUNA said that adoption of this standard would mean, in effect, "that missing stickers are presumed to be the work of vandals for which credit unions will not be held liable." Doing so would recognize that ATMs are remote, unmanned, and often beyond any practicable means of surveillance.