NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) - The global law firm Dechert LLP has defeated a lawsuit that accused it of illegally obtaining privileged emails from opposing parties in cases.
New York judge Lewis Kaplan on June 24 entered judgment for the firm about four months after Magistrate Judge Ona Wang recommended it be tossed. His one-page order agreed, finding "nothing contrary to law nor any clear error."
Oussama El Omari filed the lawsuit last year. It also named private investigator Nicholas Paul Del Rosso and Vital Management Services as defendants.
Omari alleged Del Rosso illegally obtained "a tranche" of confidential and privileged attorney-client communications between him and his attorneys.
He claims that in 2017, the defendants used "Indian hackers" to get into his email account to copy legal email correspondence. Omari further claims that in January of 2023, his attorney's emails were discovered on Del Rosso's laptop.
Omari alleges the "surveillance-for-hire" involved other Dechert adversaries and the use of phishing emails intended to trick him to access and copy his attorney communications to use in "adversarial proceedings."
Wang picked apart Omari's complaint, starting with jurisdiction issues. Dechert had represented defendants in Omari's lawsuit against his former employer, the Ras Al Khaimah Free Trade Zone in the United Arab Emirates.
"The allegations in the complaint do not satisfy either the 'transacting business' or 'tortious act' part of the (state long arm) statute," Wang wrote.
"At best, Del Ross - like Plaintiff, a domiciliary of North Carolina - was hired by a London-based Dechert attorney as an investigator for parties adverse to Plaintiff's interests in (his lawsuit against RAKFTZ), for which Plaintiff brought suit in this District."
The RAK defendants were represented by New York attorneys and Del Rosso did travel to New York to deliver a "secure drive," but there are no allegations a business transaction leading to a tort or injury was committed by Del Ross in New York, Wang wrote.
The plaintiff also missed the statute of limitations to sue, the decision says, despite his argument he did not know until a UK notice in 2023 that emails of his from 2017 had been found on Del Rosso's laptop.
A different plaintiff alleging much of the same was more successful, scoring a multimillion-dollar settlement with Dechert.