The apex consumer court has ordered a foreign cargo company to pay $75,537.26 to an Indian export house for being deficient in service by not following proper procedure and wrongly releasing the goods.
"We hold that there is clear deficiency in service by P&O Containers Limited," said National Consumer Disputed Redressal Commission Presiding Member Justice K S Gupta, members Rajyalakshmi Rao and B K Taimni.
The commission found that P&O Containers did not satisfactorily answer as to why it delivered the consignment without following proper procedure and directed it to pay complainant Jaypee Exports Ltd litigation cost of Rs 10,000.
On March 26, 1993, Jaypee Exports had sent a consignment to Miami through Evergreen Marine Corporation, a container company. The Miami-based consignee however failed to take the consignment and after which Jaypee Exports identified another buyer in Durban (Carington Trading Pvt Ltd) and instructed Evergreen Marine to forward the goods to Durban.
Evergreen Marine thus hired the services of P&O Containers to ship the goods from Miami to Durban and a bill of laden was prepared citing Jaypee Exports as the consignor.
According to standard procedure, Carington Trading Private Limited was to make payments at NED Bank, Durban, to obtain the bill of laden which was to be produced to get the goods released.
It is however, alleged that P&O Containers failed to respond properly to enquiries about the whereabouts of the goods and later it was learnt that the goods had already been released by P&O Containers.
However, no payment had been made for the same at NED Bank and the bill of laden had not been obtained from it.
P&O Containers informed the court that the consignments reached Durban on May 15, 1993 and under instructions of Carington Trading Company, the goods were released to its agent Sea Land Air. P&O Containers, on instructions of Sea Land Air, stored the goods in a depot which fell under the local customs.
The goods remained at the spot for a few days before it was seized by customs on December 10, 1993 and sold later, P&O Containers said.
P&O Containers contended that it had completed its duty by informing Carington Trading about the arrival of goods and thus claimed that there had been no deficiency in service on its part. It also challenged the territorial jurisdiction of the apex consumer court.
The commission held that the matter fell in its jurisdiction as the bill of laden showed Jaypee Exports as the consignor and New Delhi as point of origin of the transaction.
The commission also observed that since P&O Containers and Jaypee Exports have their offices in New Delhi, it has jurisdiction to decide the case.
The consumer court said the goods were released without presentation of bill of laden and thus a deficiency in service was committed by P&O Container.
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