United Pickle Co., Inc. v. Omanoff
| Decision Date | 13 June 1978 |
| Citation | 405 N.Y.S.2d 727,63 A.D.2d 892 |
| Parties | UNITED PICKLE CO., INC., Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Max OMANOFF, Defendant-Appellant. Max OMANOFF, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED PICKLE CO., INC., et al., Defendants-Respondents. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
D. H. Greenberg, New York City, for plaintiff-respondent and defendants-respondents.
B. A. Wadler, New York City, for defendant-appellant and plaintiff-appellant.
Before MURPHY, P. J., and BIRNS, FEIN, MARKEWICH and YESAWICH, JJ.
Judgment, Supreme Court, Bronx County, entered July 17, 1975, following a jury verdict awarding appellant Max Omanoff $56,000 as the value of his stock, finding for respondents on the issue of the justifiable discharge of appellant and awarding respondent, United Pickle Co., Inc. $63,000 in damages on its conspiracy counterclaim for legal fees, unanimously modified on the law, to the extent of remanding for a new trial for the purpose only of deciding what specific portion of United's legal fees were occasioned by plaintiff's malicious acts, and otherwise unanimously affirmed without costs and disbursements.
But for Omanoff's motion to dismiss the counterclaim, which charged appellant with conspiring to destroy United's business by initiating baseless lawsuits against it, we find no merit to this appeal. The principal ground underlying that motion, namely that malice had not been proven with respect to the specific acts for which respondent's legal fees had been incurred, has substance. Although it is a governing principle of our jurisprudence that since "public policy requires that all persons should freely resort to the courts for redress of wrongs, the law protects them when they act in good faith and upon reasonable grounds in commencing either a civil or criminal prosecution." Burt v. Smith, 181 N.Y. 1, 5, 73 N.E. 495, 496. Nevertheless we see no impediment here to the recovery of attorneys fees, as damages, for malice is the gravamen of the conspiracy appellant was found to have been engaged in. Mastic Fuel Service Inc. v. Cook, 55 A.D.2d 599, 389 N.Y.S.2d 388. He intentionally sought to inflict economic injury on respondents by forcing them to engage legal counsel. This was an actionable wrong. The fact that the devices he utilized to harass and oppress them were legal procedures does not relieve him from liability for those legal fees, cf. Board of Educ. v. Farmingdale, 38 N.Y.2d 397, 406, 380 N.Y.S.2d 635, 644...
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