New Jersey Title Insurance v. Caputo

The opinion of the Court was delivered by

LONG, J.

In this ease, we are called upon to define more precisely the standard of bad faith found in the Uniform Fiduciaries Law (UFL), N.J.S.A. 3B:14-55 to -61, in the context of an attorney’s embezzlement from his clients’ trust account.

I

During the period from mid-November 1993, to mid-February 1994, Joseph C. Caputo, a New Jersey attorney and sole practitioner, maintained two checking accounts, an attorney trust account and an attorney business account, at the National State Bank (Bank) in Summit.

Real estate constituted a substantial portion of…