Judgment nets $10.25M

SARASOTA — A federal court upheld a $10.25 million arbitration award won by a Sarasota attorney for two former Merrill Lynch financial advisers.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida affirmed the decision initially handed down April 3 by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. That panel ruled the advisers' employer, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch “... intentionally, willfully and deliberately engaged in a systematic and systemic fraudulent scheme to deprive” the advisers of deferred compensation. In a ruling released Sept. 17, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra ruled in favor of the advisers, saying, “the Court finds no basis to overturn the arbitration panel's ruling.”

The advisers, Meri Ramazio and Tamara Smolchek, worked for Merrill Lynch in its Delray Beach office before BofA bought the brokerage firm for $50 billion in 2008. Their case, court records show, centered on a “good reason” clause in the contract that should have allowed them to receive Merrill stock and awards if they left after the sale. The bank denied the advisers that compensation, which led to the FINRA hearings that began in 2010.

“This is the correct result in what has been a hard-fought battle,” says Michael Taaffe, a business litigation attorney with Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick in Sarasota who represented the advisers. “It supports the integrity of the FINRA arbitration process.”
Ramazio and Smolchek are two of 1,000 former Merrill Lynch financial advisers represented by Taaffe and his Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick colleagues who claim they were denied deferred compensation from Merrill. About 15 of those advisers worked on the Gulf Coast.