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 The 2009 lawsuit accused Tremont of investing $3.3 billion with
Madoff for more than a decade without investigating "red flags" that
Madoff never bought or sold securities.
The lawsuit was brought by Jay Wexler, who claims to have lost more
than $400,000 in a Tremont-managed hedge fund, the Rye Select Broad
Market Prime Fund, which invested with Madoff.
Madoff is serving a 150-year prison term for running the massive
Ponzi scheme, estimated to have cost investors more than $17 billion
of principal.
Wexler's lawsuit included fraud claims on behalf of Rye Select.
New York Supreme Court Justice Richard Lowe dismissed these claims,
noting that Tremont already had settled with other investors in a
federal class-action lawsuit based on the same accusations.
"Wexler's derivative claims were represented in the federal action
by other limited partners of the Rye Select fund," Lowe wrote in the
April 1 opinion.
Lowe also dismissed Wexler's direct claims against Tremont for fraud
and negligent misrepresentation.
Wexler's lawsuit, Lowe wrote, "fails to explain how one or more
alleged red flags made it so obvious that Madoff was running a Ponzi
Scheme that defendants must have known about the scheme and wanted
to further it."
Lowe also dismissed the lawsuit against Tremont's parent,
Oppenheimer Acquisition Corp; Oppenheimer's owner, Massachusetts
Mutual Life Insurance, and former Tremont executives Sandra Manzke
and Robert Schulman.
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Lowe said he would issue a separate opinion on motions to dismiss
the lawsuit against other named defendants, including JPMorgan
Chase, accounting firm KPMG, Bank of New York Mellon and Paul
Konigsberg, an accountant who worked with Madoff's clients.
Seth Schwartz, a lawyer representing Tremont and Schulman, said
that "Tremont is pleased with the decision."
Lawyers for Wexler, Manzke and Oppenheimer did not respond to
requests for comment on Wednesday.
A spokesman for Massachusetts Mutual did not immediately return a
request for comment.
The case is Jay Wexler, individually and derivatively on behalf of
Rye Select Broad Market Prime Fund LP v KPMG LLP et al, New York
State Supreme Court, No. 101615/2009.
(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan; editing
by Noeleen Walder and Jan Paschal)
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