People v. Kozlowski

47 A.D.3d 111, 846 N.Y.S.2d 44
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedNovember 15, 2007
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 47 A.D.3d 111 (People v. Kozlowski) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Kozlowski, 47 A.D.3d 111, 846 N.Y.S.2d 44 (N.Y. Ct. App. 2007).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Sullivan, J.

The convictions at issue arise out of the prosecution of defendants L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark H. Swartz, who were respectively the CEO and CFO of Tyco International, a multinational public corporation, for allegedly engaging in large-scale self-dealing and drawing on Tyco’s treasury, as they saw fit, for their own personal use, including investments, luxuries and expenses. They allegedly accomplished this by abusing corporate procedures while keeping the directors and shareholders in the dark. Allegedly, they stole more than $100 million in three “bonus” larcenies in 1999 and 2000 and many millions more in other thefts until their enterprise began to unravel in January 2002, when Tyco’s board learned that defendants had made a secret $20 million payment to a supposedly independent director. In June 2002, Kozlowski abruptly resigned and left Tyco after being indicted by a New York County grand jury. A [114]*114few months later, in September, both defendants were charged in a second indictment with several counts of first degree grand larceny, multiple counts of falsification of business records, securities fraud and conspiracy, leading to a conviction after trial.1

Defendants raise a host of issues. Contrary to their arguments, the larceny convictions relating to bonuses were based on legally sufficient evidence and were not against the weight of the evidence. The evidence amply supports the conclusion that defendants took unauthorized bonuses from Tyco in 1999 and 2000. As neither defendant disputes, only Tyco’s compensation committee, acting as a whole, had the authority to grant them any compensation. Every member of that committee, with the exception of Philip Hampton, who had died early in 2001, before the trial, testified to never having heard of these midyear payments, much less to having voted approval. As the compensation committee minutes show, neither the August 1999 $37.5 million reduction of defendants’ massive Key Employee Loan Program (KELP) balances, run up during the first three quarters of that fiscal year, nor the August 2000 TyCom IPO bonuses—$32 million for Kozlowski and $16 million for Swartz—in the form of a loan reduction plus tax gross-up (additional benefit to cover taxes), nor the November 2000 ADT Automotive bonuses—$16 million for Kozlowski and $8 million for Swartz, was authorized.

As the record shows, there were no references to any of these multi-million-dollar payouts in the materials prepared for the committee, no resolutions approving these bonuses in the staff minutes prepared for the committee, and no reference to bonuses in the committee’s reports to the board.2 Before either defendant could receive a bonus, the compensation committee had to certify that the performance goals had been satisfied. Since Tyco’s fiscal year ended on September 30, this certification usually occurred in early October. Most notably, Tyco’s annual proxy statements, prepared under defendants’ supervision, failed to indicate even the most oblique reference to their multimillion-dollar midyear bonuses. This documentary void revealed more than a few isolated “procedural irregularities,” as Swartz [115]*115maintains, or a “fail[ure] to adhere meticulously to all of the niceties of corporate governance,” as Kozlowski would have it. Rather this consistent pattern of documentary omission over a period of years constituted powerful evidence of defendants’ intentional hiding of these payments from the directors and led inexorably to the jury’s conclusion that defendants took these bonuses without permission or authority. The absence of any reference to these transactions in the chain of documentation available to the committee clearly demonstrates defendants’ coverup of their thievery.

Defendants’ testimonial claims of entitlement—that the bonuses represented early payouts of money that would otherwise have been due them or, at least, that they believed was due them—presented a question of fact for the jury and was, indeed, a hard sell. While the committee could have made midyear payouts if it chose to, such an event would have run counter to Tyco’s highly touted pay-for-performance philosophy.

More significantly, though, the entitlement claim was flatly refuted by Mark Foley, the Tyco executive who was responsible for the calculation of the year-end figures on which the annual bonuses were based. In fact, Foley’s testimony unequivocally established that defendants received everything they were entitled to under the end-of-the-year formula. Thus, defendants’ claims only succeeded in pitting their credibility against that of the committee members and Foley and various other members of their own staff. Defendants even contradicted each other on a number of points. The jury’s resolution of this factual issue is amply supported by the weight of the evidence since defendants’ self-serving testimony was illogical, internally inconsistent, refuted by Tyco’s records and shown to be false by all other witnesses. While defendants assert that their entitlement and good faith claims present a legal sufficiency issue, we cannot discern one except for the 1999 bonus, preserved by the motion for a trial order of dismissal, which we reject.

We reject defendants’ argument that their conduct with respect to the August 1999 bonuses (counts 1 and 2) did not constitute larceny, but rather, a civil wrong. These bonuses took the form of a reduction of defendants’ KELP balances without any tax gross-up, i.e., money, leaving Tyco. As noted, in reaching its verdict, the jury rejected defendants’ tale of entitlement, raised after the fact, and accepted the evidence showing that they took the bonuses without approval. The argument that the bonuses awarded to defendants in 1999 and 2000—used [116]*116completely in 1999 and partially in 2000 to pay down their KELP loan accounts—show that there was no taking from another, reduces itself to a claim that “all that transpired was the making of certain book entries,” a claim that, as the trial court aptly noted, “exalts form over substance.” While, indeed, the mere failure to pay one’s debts does not constitute larceny (see People v Yannett, 49 NY2d 296, 301 [1980]; see also People v Jennings, 69 NY2d 103, 127 [1986]), this is not a case of defendants’ failure to repay their debts. On the contrary, they did repay their debts, but with money in the form of bonuses that they unlawfully took from Tyco. In 1999, they clearly exercised collectively dominion and control over $37.5 million of Tyco’s money and allocated it to their own benefit, precisely the sort of taking that establishes larceny (see id. at 118-119).

The evidence was legally sufficient to support Swartz’s conviction for stealing $1.2 million (count 7), and that conviction is not against the weight of the evidence. Tyco received nothing of value in exchange for the $1.2 million it wired to Swartz’s personal account. As the record shows, Swartz had contracted for the purchase of 13 units at the Trump International Hotel and Tower “as a personal investment” and had paid the 10% down payment of $1.2 million with his own funds. Prior to March 1, 2001, the date the $1.2 million of Tyco’s funds were wired to Swartz, the seller of the Trump condominium units had already informed the purchaser, a nominee of the undisclosed Swartz, that he was in default for his intransigent refusal to disclose the real buyer’s identity, giving the seller the right to keep the $1.2 million down payment.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

People v. Pimentel
2017 NY Slip Op 2891 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 2017)
Berry v. Marchinkowski
137 F. Supp. 3d 495 (S.D. New York, 2015)
Tyco International, Ltd. v. Kozlowski
756 F. Supp. 2d 553 (S.D. New York, 2010)
Tyco International Ltd. v. Walsh
751 F. Supp. 2d 606 (S.D. New York, 2010)
People v. Kozlowski
898 N.E.2d 891 (New York Court of Appeals, 2008)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
47 A.D.3d 111, 846 N.Y.S.2d 44, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-kozlowski-nyappdiv-2007.