A state appeals court has ruled that a Rochester-based insurance and employee benefits company and related defendants are deemed to have admitted malicious prosecution allegations leveled against them by a former employee because he established “willful, contumacious and in bad faith failures” by the defendants to comply with discovery orders in his civil malicious prosecution suit.

The ex-employee and plaintiff, Fausto Prattico, “established on his motion that defendants repeatedly failed to comply with discovery orders, that such failure was willful, contumacious and in bad faith, and that [Prattico] was precluded by that failure from establishing a prima facie case,” wrote the Appellate Division, Fourth Department court in its opinion.