A judge”™s recent award in Florida of hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost profits to a mortgage company that claimed a Harrison-based competitor conspired to gain several of its employees and their pending loan deals is being appealed by the company found to have harmfully interfered with a rival”™s business.
Guaranteed Home Mortgage Co. Inc., headquartered at 108 Corporate Park Drive, and a Florida mortgage manager who led about 10 co-employees to join Guaranteed when it opened a Destin, Fla. branch office in early 2009, were ordered to pay $339,468 to New Jersey-based Mortgage Now Inc.
U.S District Court Judge M. Casey Rogers agreed with Mortgage Now attorneys that Guaranteed officials engaged in a civil conspiracy with the former Mortgage Now manager and intentionally interfered with the rival company”™s business. The judge found that Guaranteed hired Mortgage Now employees and processed their loans through Guaranteed”™s software processing system while they were still employed as loan officers at Mortgage Now.
The federal court awarded about $280,261 in profits that Mortgage Now claimed to have lost as office employees stalled on loan closings they instead brought to Guaranteed. The judge also awarded the New Jersey company approximately $59,208 in interest from February 2009, one month before Guaranteed Home Mortgage opened its Florida office within a quarter of a mile from Mortgage Now”™s Destin office.
The judge found that Louis Tesoriero, then business development director at Guaranteed Home Mortgage”™s Westchester headquarters, was knowingly involved in the recruitment of active Mortgage Now employees with Mortgage Now manager Bryan Stone. Tesoriero left Guaranteed in June 2011 and is a vice president and wealth investment banker at Merrill Lynch/Bank of America.
David Wind, founder and CEO of Guaranteed Home Mortgage Co., said he could not comment on the case “as we are going to deal with this in the court system.”
Marie Gannon, the company”™s general counsel, called it “a business-to-business labor relations dispute.”
Guaranteed Home officials said others in their industry should heed the implications of the federal case in Florida.
“We would encourage everyone to read the court papers in this matter as it certainly impacts the financing, and in particular, the mortgage banking industry,” said Gannon. “We firmly believe the Court”™s ruling was incorrect and we are confident it will be overturned on appeal.”
Mortgage Now Inc. CEO James Marchese in a prepared statement said the harm done to his company exceeded the lost profits awarded by the court. Yet the decision “should be viewed as proof that employers really do have recourse against unscrupulous companies who use ”˜inside help”™ to steal a company”™s employees,” he said.
Guaranteed Home Mortgage Co. Inc. was formed in 1992 in Manhattan by Wind, a former Citicorp Investment Bank securities analyst. At 26, he was the youngest mortgage banker ever licensed by New York state.
His company in the mid-90s opened its first branch office at Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers. Today it is licensed to operate in 27 states and the District of Columbia.
