Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Many of us pay taxes to governments that bailed out banks whose risks robbed our retirement funds. We tend to not look happily on big fat bonuses said banks then pay to their folks. That much we know.

Evidence abounds that it’s still a sore point, as distracted as we might be by such intervening events as health- care reform and Michael Jackson’s death.

But in at least one place, public resentment toward bonuses took a hit at the hands of the law. In London, a British court ruled that Commerzbank AG has to make good on promises of bonuses and severance pay to four executives at Dresdner Kleinwort, which Commerzbank took over.

“This set of cases was less about City bonuses than it was about the obligation of businesses to honor their contracts,” James Libson, a lawyer for a plaintiff told a Bloomberg News reporter by e-mail.

It still seems that a deal’s a deal, no matter how much the rest of us wish otherwise. If you want to claw back a bonus, you have to write a clawback provision into the contract.

Commerzbank kept saying that executives’ first obligation is to the bank, not their own pocketbooks.

That’s a perfectly fine argument morally. But morality and legality are not the same.

Save the Money

Commerzbank says it’s considering an appeal. It should save its money. The ex-bankers have letters and contracts promising them “guaranteed bonuses” and severance awards. Even “discretionary bonuses” were put down in writing, according to documents filed with the lawsuits.

“The bank made a series of binding contractual commitments to its employees, which it subsequently refused to honor,” Libson wrote.

None of this would matter to anyone outside the bank except that Commerzbank, Germany’s second largest, took government money to keep it going, amounting to 18.2 billion euros, or about $26 billion.

Drained by some of its own risks-gone-bad, Commerzbank wasn’t helped by the 6.3 billion euro ($9.1 billion) loss that Dresdner Kleinwort’s investment-banking units suffered last year.

Bucking the Program

So in February Commerzbank sent letters telling managers that their responsibility to the bank counts more than their contracts. While some executives voluntarily gave up compensation, not everyone got with the program.

So far three have settled their London lawsuits with Commerzbank, in addition to the four who went to court and came out winners. Some dozen suits are pending in Frankfurt and an unknown number in London.

No doubt the London ruling will encourage others to sue, which may be one of the reasons Commerzbank is thinking about an appeal.

While that plays out on one side of the Atlantic, it’s clear that bonus backlash still whips around the U.S.

When Bank of America Corp. tried to ease out of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s grasp by paying $33 million to resolve a bonus-related flap, a federal judge put the brakes on the settlement.

Papering over the allegation with cash wouldn’t get to the truth of the matter, said U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan. He set up a hearing for next week.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says government agencies are looking into its bonuses, too. And New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo made sure we don’t forget the bailed out banks’ bonuses when he reported last week that nine financial institutions that received a combined $175 billion in federal money handed out almost $33 billion in bonuses last year.

Twenty Years

Some 5,000 employees took home bonuses of at least $1 million. That may not be much on Wall Street, but for most Americans that’s about what they’ll see in 20 years.

Median household income in the U.S. came to $50,233 back in good ol’ 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau reports. And that’s the figure for the entire annual income for the whole household.

All of this keeps heat on Congress and the White House, which have yet to find a way to fix the problem.

A House bill passed last week would authorize the SEC and bank regulators to bar pay practices that encourage excessive risk-taking and threaten economic health. Fear of too much government intervention will make it tougher going in the Senate. President Barack Obama isn’t inclined to support it, either.

What’s clear is that we can’t count on banks to be humbled. Three investment bankers for Barclays Plc have just now been guaranteed bonuses for the next two years as if none of this had happened, according to the London-based Times.

And now, for those who doubted it, we know a promise is a promise.

(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 6, 2009 21:01 EDT