Summary
holding that “the criminal acts committed by the defendant's employees were outside of the scope of their employment and in no way advanced the interests of the defendant, so that the defendant could not be held liable under a theory of respondeat superior”
Summary of this case from City of Syracuse v. Loomis Armored US, LLCOpinion
April 4, 1994
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Di Tucci, J.).
Ordered that the order is affirmed, with costs.
The plaintiff, a market maker on the American Stock Exchange, sued the defendant, a well-known New York law firm, after it was discovered that three support employees of the defendant had stolen confidential information from the firm, which they sold to outside parties who used it to make illegal trades. The plaintiff alleges that he suffered monetary damages after purchasing options on stock that were adversely affected by the illegal trades made using the inside information leaked by the defendant's three renegade employees.
The plaintiff was not a client of the defendant's, with the result that, in the absence of any privity between the parties, the defendant owed the plaintiff no duty in the hiring and/or supervision of its employees, nor in maintaining the confidentiality of the stolen information (see, Turcotte v Fell, 68 N.Y.2d 432; Nihalani v Tekhomes, Inc., 177 A.D.2d 484; Associated Factors Corp. v O'Neill Detective Agency, 146 A.D.2d 728). We note, in any event, that the criminal acts committed by the defendant's employees were outside of the scope of their employment and in no way advanced the interests of the defendant, so that the defendant could not be held liable under a theory of respondeat superior (see, Riviello v Waldron, 47 N.Y.2d 297; Cornell v State of New York, 46 N.Y.2d 1032; Horowitz v Sears Roebuck Co., 137 A.D.2d 492; Island Associated Coop. v Hartmann, 118 A.D.2d 830). Accordingly, summary judgment was properly awarded to the defendant. Lawrence, J.P., Joy, Friedmann and Krausman, JJ., concur.