LOCAL firm Carlo Products Limited will now have to fork out some US$839,000 to make good on a judgement against it, following a successful lawsuit brought by manufacturing firm, Crown Corke de Guatemala in the Jamaican Supreme Court.
The award was made recently by Justice Ingrid Mangatal in a scathing 27-page judgement in favour of Crown Corke de Guatemala, a company incorporated in Guatemala, which is part of an international group of companies.
Crown Corke, which manufactures and sells assorted containers and crown caps, was represented by Kingston-based attorney John G Graham of the firm John G Graham and Company.
The Guatemalan firm sued Carlo Products Limited for US$418,215 plus interest for goods which it claimed it had sold and delivered to Carlo Products.
In its claim, the company said that between the period November 1998 and May 1999, David Hughes, the then managing director of Carlo Products Limited, ordered goods from Crown Corke on behalf of Carlo Products. The goods were shipped to Jamaica from Guatemala and Crown Corke claimed that it was never paid for those goods.
Crown Coke also sued the estate of Hughes, who died in May 1999, for fraudulently representing that he was acting on behalf of Carlo Products Limited when he ordered the goods in question and for breach of warranty of authority.
In its defence, Carlo Products, which now trades under the name Latin America Exporters, denied that it ordered or purchased any goods from Crown Corke. Carlos Products said that if it did receive any goods from Crown Corke it had ordered them from OG Smith & Company, a company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and to which it made payment directly for the goods.
Carlo Products further claimed that it had a contractual arrangement with OG Smith & Company whereby OG Smith & Company would source goods on its behalf, and for which OG Smith would be paid directly.
Following the two-day trial, Mangatal awarded judgement in favour of Crown Corke in the amount of US $418,215. Interest was agreed at the rate of 10 per cent per annum, running from July 1999 to July 2009, bringing the amount to US$839,982.
Mangatal stated in her written judgement that there was "a preponderance of evidence" that the goods were provided to Carlo Products as a result of orders and requests made by Hughes directly to Crown Corke, and not as a result of any contract between OG Smith and Carlo Products.
She further found that Hughes, as managing director of the company, had the authority of Carlo Products to order the goods and, in so doing, was holding himself out to Crown Corke as having such authority.
Source:jamaicaobserver.com
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