Mar Roxas ‘girl’ extracts restitution from FedEx over lost USD checks
The former chief of staff of Mar Roxas, who herself became a target of the opposition during the 2016 elections, has just been handed a delayed victory.
The Supreme Court has ordered P450,000 in damages awarded to the Roxas staffer, restaurateur Eliza Bettina Antonino, against the giant courier delivery services giant Federal Express for having lost nearly $30,000 in assorted Citibank checks over a decade and a half ago.
Antonino, who was appointed SSS commissioner during the PNoy administration, and her mother, PNoy Cabinet member Luwalhati Antonino, FedExed from the Philppines a number of US dollar checks to a certain “Veronica Z. Sison” of Jackson Heights, New York in 2003.
The checks, made out to property management company “Maxwell-Kates Inc.” and the “New York County Department of Finance,” were supposed to cover the monthly charges and real estate taxes for a condo unit in Manhattan that was registered under the name of the Antonino daughter, then fresh out of college from UP Diliman.
But the recipient never received the FedEx package, “resulting in the non-payment of Luwalhati and Eliza’s obligation and the foreclosure of the unit,” according to court records.
The unit referred to a two-bed, three-bath, 130-squaremeter condo at The Allegro at 62 West 62nd Street now renting for $6,600 a month, according to Douglas Elliman real estate company.
It is not clear if the Citibank checks had actually been cashed, but FedEx tried to wriggle out of its liability by saying the Antoninos had violated the terms of the airway waybill by shipping checks.
But the FedEx line of defense was shot down by Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, who said that the missing checks were “order instruments,” not bearer instruments nearly equivalent to the prohibited cash for transport.
“The contract between (FedEx) and respondents (Antoninos) is a contract of adhesion; it was prepared solely by petitioner for respondents to conform to,” said Leonen, quoting a previous SC decision. “Viewed through this lens, with greater reason should respondents be exculpated from liability for shipping documents or instruments, which are reasonably understood as not being money, and for being unable to declare them as such.”
The Antoninos had won the first round after a short trial in 2004, when then Quezon City Regional Trial Court Judge Hilario Laqui handed the monetary damages but, instead of complying, FedEx chose to question the judgment all the
way, and losing every time, to the Supreme Court.
The younger Antonino is better known these days as the co-founder and managing director of The Moment Group, the restaurant chain that includes 8 Cuts Burger, Manam, and the local franchise of the award-winning Taiwanese chain, Din Tai Fung.
Money talks
•The Salcedo Auctions wrote to say that it wholly owns "The WellAppointed Life", being originally conceptualized by proprietors Karen and Ramon Lerma.
“A certain Paulo Martel, a former associate, has no proprietary ownership whatsoever of either the company or the trademark,” said Lerma counsel Arsenio Cabrera Jr.
The trademark row, plus an estafa complaint filed by Martel against the Lermas, threatens to put a damper on the next auction at the Peninsula on Sept. 22-23.
• San Miguel Pure Foods is opposing Bounty Agro Ventures’s trademark application submitted by its roast chicken chain’s Chooks-toGo for its marketing slogan, Manok ng Bayan.
Heard through the grapevine
There’s a new terror at the Urdaneta Apartments, more ferocious than a famously litigant unit owner who has struck fear among his neighbors.
Two Alaskan Malamutes owned, by a former movie producer, had bitten a caregiver of a senior resident, and now the neighbors are calling on the board to ban the animals, the four-legged variety, that is.
The movie producer has, in the meantime, written a P100,000 check to placate the victim, but the neighbors refused to be mollified, since it was apparently not the first time the dogs had attacked strangers.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com