Question:
B. C. Ziegler and Company (Ziegler) was a securities company located in West Bend. It had established an internal procedure by which its customer lists were treated confidentially. This procedure included burning or shredding any paper to be disposed of that contained a customer name or information. Nonetheless, in late 1985, Ziegler delivered a number of boxes of un-shredded scrap paper to Lynn’s Waste Paper Company for disposal. One of Lynn’s employees, Ehren, who had been in the securities business and had worked for two of Ziegler’s competitors, noticed the information contained in the delivery from Ziegler and purchased six boxes of the Ziegler wastepaper for $16.75 from Lynn’s. Shortly thereafter, Ehren and his daughter sorted through the information and ultimately obtained 11,600 envelopes of information on Ziegler’s customers, including names, account summaries, and other information. Ehren sold this information to Thorson, a
broker in competition with Ziegler. Thorson then sent a mailing to the Ziegler customers to solicit security sales for his firm and obtained an abnormally high response rate as a result. Ziegler, with the help of the West Bend Police Department, traced the dissemination of this information to Ehren and sought from the court a permanent injunction against Ehren using or disclosing the information regarding Ziegler’s clients. What result?
Broker
A broker is someone or something that acts as an intermediary third party, managing transactions between two other entities. A broker is a person or company authorized to buy and sell stocks or other investments. They are the ones responsible for...