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Marboah v. Ackerman6/30/2005
ied to recover from her attorney because his allegedly faulty advice caused her fraud to be uncovered in such a way that she could no longer benefit therefrom.
Id. The court in Mettes affirmed a judgment rejecting the plaintiff's claim:
The Circuit Court ordered the stipulated agreement of June 4 set aside because it was sufficiently tainted by the false and fraudulent representations of the plaintiff here, Mary Mettes. Mettes would now have us allow a recovery from her attorney because his faulty advice caused her fraud to be uncovered in such a way that she could no longer benefit therefrom. Whether Mettes received negligent advice from Quinn is immaterial to our decision, for the essence of her prayer is that she be permitted to benefit from her fraud.
It has been the policy of the courts to refuse their aid to anyone who seeks to found his cause of action upon an illegal or immoral act or transaction. This refusal to aid derives not from the consideration of the defendant, but from a desire to see that those who transgress the moral or criminal code shall not receive aid from the judicial branch of Government.
Id. at 551 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
In the present case, there could have been no recovery of workers' compensation if the true facts had been disclosed. In his prayer for relief in the Superior Court, Marboah demanded that $5,000,000 be awarded to the man he was impersonating or, as he put it, to his "ghost identity" -- an identity he had falsely assumed because he knew that, if he acknowledged his true identity, he would not be eligible for the workers' compensation that he now claims to have lost as a result of the defendants' negligence. Marboah's fraud is thus inseparable from his claim for compensation and from his lawsuit, and it has the requisite "degree of overall centrality," Breezevale, 783 A.2d at 574, to his claim for damages; it goes "to the very core of the entire situation." Id. As in Mettes, we are not prepared to vindicate that fraud by countenancing any award to its perpetrator, when, given the facts as they truly exist, he would be entitled to nothing.
IV.
In Marboah's appeal (No. 03-CV-1378), the judgment is affirmed. The defendants' cross-appeals (Nos. 03-CV-1413 and 03-CV-1414) are dismissed as moot.
So ordered.
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