Appeal filed in Corcoran client list case

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By CANDACE TAYLOR

NEW YORK -- Aiming to send a message to the real estate industry, former Corcoran Group agent Sarit Shmueli has filed to appeal a recent court ruling stripping her of punitive damages a jury awarded her after she claimed the company stole her electronic client list.

Three years ago, the New York State Supreme Court found in favor of Shmueli, who had sued the company claiming that Corcoran, and in particular, Executive Vice President Tresa Hall, had stolen her client list "deliberately and maliciously" from her computer after Shmueli was fired. Shmueli was awarded $400,000 in compensation and $1.2 million in punitive damages.

Corcoran appealed the decision, and the Appellate Division in December 2009 upheld the compensatory damages ruling, but decided to vacate the punitive damage award on the grounds that "precluding a terminated employee from having access to its computer system does not evince a high degree of moral turpitude," according to court documents.

On Jan. 6, Shmueli filed a request for the case to be heard by a higher court, the New York Court of Appeals. In the request, Shmueli's attorney, Herald Price Fahringer, argued that the Appellate Division made a mistake when it referred to her as an "employee" of the Corcoran Group. Rather, like most city real estate agents, Shmueli was an independent contractor, he said.

This "misapprehension was absolutely critical to the outcome of the case because there are vast differences between the rights of employees and independent contractors," Fahringer argued in court documents. "The law is clear that customer information -- such as client lists -- stored on a computer leased and utilized by an independent contractor remains the personal property of the independent contractor -- not the computer's owner."

Moreover, the denial of access to the computer was "only one of many acts involving moral turpitude inflicted upon Sarit Shmueli by Corcoran," Fahringer's request said.

Shmueli was an agent at Corcoran from 1996 to 2002. In 2002, her suit claimed that Corcoran asked her to "falsely testify" in response to a lawsuit alleging that the company had failed to disclose material information to the purchaser of the apartment. When Shmueli refused, she claimed, she was fired, and prevented from returning to the computer where her client list was stored.

"Corcoran unconscionably and flagrantly retaliated against Shmueli because of her refusal to commit perjury for Corcoran in a separate civil lawsuit," Fahringer argued in court documents. ...CONTINUED

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