Consultant who says First Union bank used his ideas awarded $276 million in lawsuit

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Posted 7:57AM on Wednesday, March 27, 2002

BALTIMORE - A businessman who said First Union Bank started a $2.4 billion business with his ideas was awarded $276 million by a jury, in one of the largest legal judgments in Maryland history. The six-member Circuit Court jury agreed with software company owner Scott Steele that First Union, now called Wachovia Corp., illegally used his software for online loan applications. It deliberated for less than 30 minutes Tuesday before awarding Steele $200 million in punitive damages and $76 million in compensatory damages. Wachovia is the nation's fourth-largest banking company. "The worst thing in America is a cheating bank," one of Steele's lawyers, William H. Murphy Jr., told the jury in closing arguments. "We want a punishment that will hurt them, a punishment large enough that corporate America will pay attention and say 'We won't ever do it again."' Bank officials said they were stunned by the verdict and will seek to have it overturned. First Union's business took off after Steele's company, Steele Software Systems Corp., helped it launch the online loan application system in 1997. The bank nominated Steele, 44, for its "Vendor of the Year" award. But his attorneys contended that the next year, the bank formed its own company, GreenLink, which used many of Steele's methods. Steele's attorneys also said the bank refused to send him at least 650,000 transactions he was contractually entitled to process. He would have been paid $80 for each transaction.