Monday, August 21, 2006

Another certification. Lot's of certifications these days. In Thyroff v. National Mutual Insurance Co., the Court certified the following question to the New York Court of Appeals:

Is a claim of conversion cognizable for electronic data?

The decision in that case can be found here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Supreme Court Justice Herman Cahn Shmueli v. The Corcoran Group, 104824/03 was outstanding with his reasoning and decision with his case.

"The question is," according to Cahn's decision, "does the common law tort of conversion become an extinct vestige of the past as to documents maintained on a computer, merely because traditional definitions of documents evolve over time to the point where wood pulp is no longer the only required medium upon which to record data?"

Their lack of wood pulp notwithstanding, Shmueli's electronic records still comprised property, Cahn ruled.

The history of "conversion" has centered "exclusively on the physical theft" of tangible property, according to Cahn. "Property," he added, includes much that is not tangible.


Cahn extended that analogy to the present case.

"There should be no reason why that practical view should not apply equally to the present generation of documents -- electronic documents -- which are just as vulnerable to theft and wrongful transfer as paper documents, if not more so," he concluded.

Prior to the termination of my contract of twenty one years with Nationwide Insurance Company, Nationwide lured me away to their regional office for a bogus meeting. The meeting was all about the theft of my policyholder information, business information, and personal data as discovery documents show. That morning when my staff turned on our leased computers, Nationwide’s IT departments in Columbus Ohio uploaded all my current data and simultaneously change my personal passwords which locked me out of my eight CPU’s and my office network server.

All my business, personal data, policyholder information, personal software, e-mail, and its information were stolen via an AT&T (T-1) line, password change. This action killed my independent agency I built from scratch since 1979. I had over 8600 policies in force with annual premium over five million dollars. Sadly I had to terminate eight loyal employees.

I am finding relief that soon I will get my day in court. I have many emails and documents I will get to display showing the infectious greed and corruption that has contaminated this company and corporate business everywhere.

Documents produced through discovery will show malicious intent to put me and other agents out of business by changing personal computer passwords and applying company lockout procedures to steal all personal and policyholder data.

What took place prior to my agency agreement being terminated really shows how modern technology has outpaced business ethics and the law. Our laws must keep up with our technology.

Sincerely, Louis Thyroff