Interlegal defended world freight forwarder`s interests in court, allowing no damages recover totaling up to UAH 15 million
1 September, 2020
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Interlegal got a request from a Client, one of the world’s largest forwarders, to protect his interests in enforcement proceedings to recover damages amounting to almost UAH 15 million.
The essence of the dispute arose from the fact that the freight forwarder provided the delivery of cargos for a manufacturing company, operating in Ukraine. The parties had long-standing partnership relations and had been working with each other for many years, but a conflict developed between them, resulting that the Customer (the manufacturing company) went to court with a statement of claim to recover UAH 15 million for damages as a result of a belated freight forwarder`s delivery.
This case was special because:
• the statement of the claim with attachments was comprised of about 3000 sheets;
• the case consisted of 15 volumes in total;
• the Claimant provided the court with the opinion of a forensic expert, utterly confirming the existence of the claimed losses;
• the Claimant declared joint claims against the Ukrainian forwarding company and its parent foreign company.
Claimant`s demands were that the failure of the freight forwarder to deliver the cargo on time caused the claimant’s equipment to be idle, the need for its readjustment, and the claimant’s use of strategic stocks of similar cargo of other sizes and etc.
The team of Interlegal completely analyzed the stated requirements and the supporting evidence attached, subsequently presenting their position to the court regarding:
• lack of necessity to involve the parent company of the Client;
• lack of proper evidence that must be attached to confirm the delivery of the cargo;
• lack of a cause-and-effect relationship as for the stated requirements;
• the parties did not have the original forwarding agreement on the basis of which the filed particulars of the claim arose;
• groundlessness of the forensic expert’s conclusions and non-compliance of the said conclusion with the requirements of the current legislation.
Upon hearing the arguments of the parties, having analyzed all the documents in the case, the court fully accepted the position of the Interlegal team and refused the Claimant to satisfy all the claims.
Thus, the specialists of Interlegal managed to defend the interests of the forwarder and to ensure no negative precedent emergence on imposing additional responsibility on the forwarder, which goes beyond the principles of normal business in this area.
The project was processed by a team of leading lawyers Vitalii Tolstik, Mikhail Selivanov, junior lawyer Taras Dragan under the leadership of leading lawyer Ellina Romanova.
