American Tooling Center, Inc. v. Travelers Casualty & Surety Co.

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ATC, a Michigan manufacturer, outsources orders, including to YiFeng, a Chinese company. ATC pays vendors in four separate payments, based on manufacturing progress. YiFeng emails ATC invoices. On March 18, 2015, ATC’s vice-president, Gizinski, emailed YiFeng employee Chen requesting all outstanding invoices. An unidentified third party intercepted this email, and impersonating Chen, began corresponding with Gizinski. On March 27, the impersonator emailed Gizinski that, due to an audit, ATC should wire its payments to a different account from usual. YiFeng had previously, legitimately informed ATC it had changed its banking details; ATC had no process for verifying the information. Gizinski wired the money to the new account. On April 3, the impersonator emailed Gizinski, stating that “due to some new bank rules,” the previous transfer was not credited to its account so it would return the payment. The impersonator requested that Gizinski wire the money to a different bank account. Gizinski wired the money to this new account. The impersonator ran this scam twice more. Gizinski wired additional payments of $1575 and $482,640.41. When the real YiFeng demanded payment, ATC paid YiFeng approximately 50% of the outstanding debt; the remaining 50% was contingent on ATC’s insurance claim. ATC sought recovery from Travelers, under the Policy’s “Computer Fraud” provision. Travelers denied the claim. ATC sued for breach of contract. The court granted Travelers summary judgment. The Sixth Circuit reversed. Computer fraud “directly caused” ATC’s “direct loss” and no exclusion applied. View "American Tooling Center, Inc. v. Travelers Casualty & Surety Co." on Justia Law