New York Court have acted vigilantly to keep the duties of insurance brokers and agents to their customers narrow.  Based on this precedent, the plaintiffs in Scotto Princeton LLC v. Felsen Assocs. Inc. attempted to allege their insurance broker breach a fiduciary duty to them based on their brokers’ failure to obtain business interruption insurance for a certain property.

A fire affected that property, and the plaintiffs were unable to build a hotel on that land according to a certain schedule.  The plaintiffs attempted to demonstrate the breach of a fiduciary duty by alleging that the broker held himself to be an expert on insurance and had acted as a de facto risk manager for several of their enterprises. 

Relying on Murphy v. Kuhn, Supreme Court, Nassau County was unconvinced of the plaintiffs’ attempts to establish that a special relationship existed between them and their broker.  Irrespective of their creative pleading, the Court observed that the plaintiffs had merely established a long-term broker-customer relationship.