On September 16, 2026, the Second Department issued a decision in Marchand v. NPL Consulting Servs., Inc., 2026 NY Slip Op. 05302, holding that a fraud claim failed for lack of due diligence/reasonable reliance, explaining:
The elements of a cause of action alleging fraud are a material misrepresentation of a fact, knowledge of its falsity, an intent to induce reliance, justifiable reliance by the plaintiff and damages. A claim rooted in fraud must be pleaded with the requisite particularity under CPLR 3016(b). A plaintiff is expected to exercise ordinary diligence and may not claim to have reasonably relied on a defendant’s representations where he or she has means available to him or her of knowing, by the exercise of ordinary intelligence, the truth or the real quality of the subject of the representation.
Here, the plaintiffs alleged that Marchand, an experienced businessperson, relied upon the NPL defendants’ alleged misrepresentations without conducting any investigation or performing any due diligence into the factual basis for that information or the viability of the trucking business as a business opportunity. Accordingly, since the plaintiffs failed to adequately allege justifiable reliance, the Supreme Court properly granted that branch of the NPL defendants’ motion which was to dismiss the cause of action alleging fraud insofar as asserted against them.
(Internal quotations and citations omitted).