By Jeff Lehr
jlehr@joplinglobe.com
The efforts of a home in Carthage to recover some portion of more than $250,000 embezzled three to four years ago by a bookkeeper now rest in a lawsuit filed against the bank that held its checking account.
A hearing slated Thursday in Jasper County Circuit Court in Joplin in the lawsuit of Sunshine Children’s Home against Bank of America was scuttled at the request of the plaintiff’s attorney, Nate Dally.
Court records indicate that Dally informed Circuit Judge David Mouton that the hearing he had sought on the bank’s objections to requests the home has made in the discovery phase of the lawsuit was not necessary at this time.
The petition that Sunshine filed two years ago alleges that the Carthage branch of Bank of America allowed the home’s former bookkeeper, Cynthia Brosam, to write $250,781 in unauthorized checks on the home’s account between January 2005 and July 2006.
A criminal investigation showed that the checks were deposited into Brosam’s personal account at the same bank. Brosam, 52, of Carthage, pleaded guilty in June 2007 to a felony charge of stealing and was sentenced to five years in prison.
The lawsuit maintains that the bank failed to use ordinary care in the handling of Sunshine’s checking account.
The lawsuit states: “It was obvious these checks were forged and it was obvious that Cynthia Brosam did not command a $200,000 a year salary from the Sunshine Children’s Home. Ordinary care would have given rise to suspicion in this account.”
The suit also alleges that the bank provided the home with a false sense of security in a signature-card system employed by the bank that the bank then failed to use before the discovery of the thefts in July 2006.
Bank of America maintains in court filings by its attorneys from Kansas City that the home’s damages were caused by its own failure to monitor the account. The bank also maintains that Sunshine Children’s Home is precluded from asserting claims because the home “failed to exercise reasonable promptness in discovering the unauthorized signatures and/or payments and reporting the wrongdoing.”
The bank also maintains that Brosam was an agent of the home “with an apparent authority to bind it for her actions in making any unauthorized payments or fraudulent transfers,” and that some or all of the plaintiff’s claims may be barred by applicable statutes of limitations.
Background
Cynthia Brosam was Sunshine Children’s Home’s bookkeeper and assistant director for 12 years until she quit July 12, 2006. That same month, members of the home’s board of directors were notified by the bank that the corporate account was overdrawn and that employee payroll checks had bounced.
Sunshine Children’s Home is a home for developmentally disabled adults at 9217 County Lane 175.
