Glenn Agre Bergman & Fuentes secured a precedent-setting appellate victory on behalf of a cyberfraud victim in her negligence lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase Bank. In its decision, the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division – First Department affirmed the denial of Chase’s motion to dismiss the complaint. Addressing novel issues of law, the court held that Chase owes a duty of care to its customers to abide by its own anti-fraud policies and procedures. The decision is available here.
A New Jersey resident who banked at a local Chase branch fell victim to a scheme—hatched by David Tate, a principal of Alchemy Consultant LLC—to swindle the victim after learning that she was interested in making investments. The defendant had the plaintiff wire $300,000 from her Chase account to Alchemy’s newly opened Chase account. It was learned that the Chase employee who opened the Alchemy account recorded Tate’s taxpayer identification number as “00-0000000” and failed to record Tate’s personal identification. No corporate documentation for Alchemy was provided to Chase.
The victim notified Chase of the fraud and the bank took no action. These failures were in flagrant violation of Chase’s publicized anti-fraud procedures. The plaintiff then asserted a claim against Chase in negligence based on its alleged failure to abide by its publicized anti-fraud procedures.
The Glenn Agre team was led by partners Michael Paul Bowen and Skye Tian Gao and included associate Jewel Tewiah.