Then, over a three-hour period, 47 wire transfers and 12 transfer-of-fund requests were initiated from EMI's account. The bank did not check with EMI about the unusual activity for several hours, and even after it was asked not to honor any transfers, the bank did not take action until another 38 wire transfers had taken place, the complaint alleged.

In its response, Comerica claimed that EMI's loss was solely its own fault. "Valid credentials assigned to an EMI employee were used to authenticate a logon for purposes of online banking transactions," the bank said. "If some unknown criminals used those credentials, rather than the EMI employee to whom they had been entrusted, this was caused solely by the actions of that EMI employee."

The bank also said it should have been obvious "to any reasonably alert person" that the phishing site where the EMI employee entered the company's banking credentials was not a legitimate site.

Neither EMI nor Comerica responded immediately to a request for comment. The case is not scheduled to go to trail until the end of this year.

The dispute is similar to several other disputes in front of courts around the country. One example is a of Plano, which was robbed of over $800,000 in a fashion very similar to EMI. In that case however, it is the bank that has filed a lawsuit asking a federal district court to absolve it of any blame.