The National Pension Service (NPS), which suffered losses from the Samsung Securities dividend error incident in 2018, has won its final lawsuit against Samsung Securities.

The Supreme Court's Second Division (Presiding Justice Oh Kyung-mi) finalized the lower court ruling on Wednesday, which partially ruled in favor of the plaintiff in the damage suit filed by the NPS against Samsung Securities.

Samsung Securities must pay 1.86 billion won to the NPS.

On April 6, 2018, due to an employee's mistake, Samsung Securities distributed 1,000 shares per share instead of a cash dividend of 1,000 won per share for employee stock ownership.

At the time, the shares distributed to employees amounted to 2.81295 billion shares, totaling 112 trillion won in scale.

This exceeded the share issuance limit under Samsung Securities' articles of incorporation by dozens of times, earning them the label of "phantom stocks."

Subsequently, confusion ensued as some employees who received the phantom stocks sold them off.

The shares sold by employees reached 5.01 million shares, and Samsung Securities' stock price plummeted by up to 11.7 percent during intraday trading.

The NPS filed a lawsuit claiming damages of 29.9 billion won due to the drop in stock prices.

In August 2024, the first trial ruled that Samsung Securities should pay 1.86 billion won.

The first trial pointed out that although Samsung Securities needed to establish internal processing standards or policies regarding dividend work procedures and requirements to prevent risks such as excessive or erroneous dividend payments, it failed to establish such standards or policies.

It also judged that even after the dividend accident occurred, the dissemination of the accident and notices prohibiting sales were not properly executed, and measures such as blocking sell orders for executives' and employees' accounts were delayed, resulting in massive sales.

However, the first trial limited Samsung Securities' liability to 50 percent, stating that "the accident occurred due to unintended errors by the dividend-handling employees or personal misconduct by the selling employees, and it is harsh to hold the company entirely responsible for the losses."

Accordingly, the compensation amount was calculated as 1.86 billion won by offsetting the gains obtained by the NPS purchasing at dropped stock prices from 50 percent of the damage amount (3.86 billion won) calculated by subtracting the actual selling price of the NPS from the stock price that would have normally formed had there been no accident.

Both the NPS and Samsung Securities appealed, but the appellate court's ruling was the same.

Like the first trial, the second trial did not accept the NPS's argument that Samsung Securities also bears employer liability under the Civil Act as an employer of employees in charge of dividend work.

The Supreme Court dismissed the appeals, stating that there is a high possibility of recognizing a substantial causal relationship between the operational negligence of employees in charge of dividend work and the damages of the NPS, thereby recognizing employer liability under the Civil Act unlike the second trial.

However, it concluded that even if employer liability is additionally recognized, the scope of damages in the second trial is correct as a result.

(Photo: Yonhap News)