Charges reversed: Ambassador’s wife wins battle vs credit card firm
The wife of the Philippine ambassador to the United Kingdom, Maria Linda Floirendo-Lagdameo, has finally secured a reversal after nearly two decades of dispute with a credit card company.
In a pre-Christmas decision, the Court of Appeals reversed the Pasig Regional and Metropolitan Trial Courts, which had ordered Lagdameo to pay Bankard $7,128.27, plus one percent interest per month and another one percent penalty charge per month from July 2000.
“The cause of action of respondent Bankard was never established,” said Associate Justice Remedios SalazarFernando, with Franchito Diamante and Ma. Luisa Quijano-Padilla concurring. “Bankard failed to establish that it is the creditor of Lagdameo.”
The appellate justices noted that the issuing bank for Lagdameo’s original Mastercard International credit card in the 1990s was PCI Bank, which had been merged with Equitable, with the merged banks later having been taken over by BDO.
Bankard itself was spun off by Equitable PCI Bank in 2000 to the Yuchengco bank RCBC.
Even though Bankard has maintained that it “managed” PCI Bank’s Mastercard, the credit card application form signed by Lagdameo showed that PCI Bank was the juridical entity that had a contractual relationship with Lagdameo.
“The issuing bank that issued the credit card is obliged to pay the merchants the goods or services that were purchased on credit by the credit card holder,” SalazarFernando said. “In this case, PCI Bank, as the issuer of the subject credit card, had the obligation to pay the alleged purchases made by petitioner Lagdameo.”
“It is, thus, incumbent on respondent Bankard to prove why it is entitled to the credit card collection receivables of PCI Bank, or at the very least establish the exact nature of its business arrangement with the issuing bank,” she said.
Unfortunately, both Bankard and Lagdameo, and even the two lower courts, had assumed “without clear basis” that Bankard is the creditor, the appellate court said.
“Courts of law may only render judgment based on the evidence presented by the party litigants,” said the appellate court, noting that the statement of accounts sent to Lagdameo from 1997 to 2000 never even mentioned that Bankard was the biller in the documents.
According to court records, Bankard identified itself as a corporation “engaged in the business and operation of credit cards,” without explaining its participation in the transactions covered by the credit cards issued by PCI Bank.
“Assuming, in arguendo, that petitioner Lagdameo is obligated to pay the alleged outstanding credit card dues, respondent Bankard failed to prove that it is the entity that is entitled to receive payment,” said the appellate court, dismissing Bankard’s collection complaint.
And speaking of the Court of Appeals, Ayala Land has lost a contractualization battle with seven former construction crew that Ayala Land subsidiary Makati Development Corp. had spun off to a labor contractor disguised as a workers’ cooperative.
In another pre-Christmas decision, the appellate court sided with the National Labor Relations Commission that Makati Development was solidarily liable with the workers’ cooperative for the separation pay and backwages of the illegally dismissed daily-paid workers.
Associate justices Ramon Garcia, Eduardo Peralta Jr., and Gabriel Robeniol said that the service agreement entered by the Adventurer’s Multipurpose Cooperative with Makati Development had failed to cite a particular project, other than stating that the cooperative was hired for “Luzon projects”, in violation of government labor rules allowing labor-only contracts.
Besides, the workers’ cooperative had admitted that it entered into a service agreement with Makati Development, contrary to the position of the latter that it was Makati Development that had entered into a service agreement with the cooperative, the appellate court said
“It may also be well to note that the work of private respondents as carpenters, masons, painters, helpers and electrician, is clearly indispensable to the principal business of petitioner Makati Development and subsidiary MDC BuildPlus, a company engaged in the construction business,” the court said.
Money talks
• Eastern Telecom has been ordered by the Court of Appeals to pay partner Philcomsat P48 million rent from January 1984 to June 2014, plus nearly P572,000 a month onward for the excess office space that Eastern Telecom continues to occupy in their joint venture Telecom Plaza building in Makati.
• After a decade of litigation, the former regional sales director of Johnny Walker, James Stephen Campbell, has been awarded over P530,000 in damages against Ayala Land for the five-month delay in delivering the One Serendra condo unit that Campbell and his wife had paid in full in 2007.
Heard through the grapevine
The untimely passing of construction magnate Victor Consunji has left over P1.1 billion in listed DMCI and Semirara Mining shares in his estate.
E-mail: moneygoround.manila@yahoo.com