The Luz Market, sanctioned at the port of Las Palmas
The Fourth Section of the Las Palmas Provincial Court has handed down a ruling rejecting the appeal lodged by the Greek company La Luz Market (LLM) against a decision by First Instance Court No. 12 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the corresponding ordinary proceedings. With this ruling, the court upholds the obligation of the defendant company to pay €926,283 to Centro Portuario de Empleo de Las Palmas, S.A. (CPE) as the outstanding balance for amortisation of port services, plus statutory interest accrued since the extrajudicial demand issued on 13 February 2020, and it also orders costs of the appeal to be borne by the appellant party.
The court examined the complex commercial and corporate relationships between the two entities. CPE operates as a company that manages port stevedores, whose main role is to make workers available to its shareholding companies. Under this structure, the Laskadiris group subsidiary maintained the dual status of shareholder and client, creating simultaneous obligations relating both to the use of stevedoring personnel and to redistributions of corporate capital and the subscription of passive dividends.
Promissory notes from 2013
The central legal dispute focused on the nature of the balance being claimed and the validity of the accounting compensation operations. During 2012, following an agreed redistribution of capital and a corporate increase in CPE, payment obligations were generated for LLM in the amounts of €172,933.50 (share purchase) and €472,660.50 (65% of passive dividends outstanding). In April 2013, LLM’s representatives expressly authorised that 20 promissory notes previously delivered—originally issued as commercial advances to pay ordinary stevedoring invoices—be used to cover the purchase price of the shares and the payment of the passive dividends.
Mutual assignment of payments
In response to the appellant’s argument about alleged statute of limitations or an alleged alteration in the basis for collection (mutatio libelli), the Provincial Court concludes that there was an agreed allocation of payments (in accordance with Article 1,172 of the Spanish Civil Code). By voluntarily applying those promissory notes to settle the corporate capital transactions, the invoices for the use of stevedoring personnel remained pending settlement in the commercial account. The ruling stresses that, since there were no additional cash injections to settle the ordinary operating traffic, LLM has not proved the cancellation of the debt claimed.
The Chamber also dismissed the appeal grounds concerning the deferral of the item due to the 2009 deficit. From an initial amount of €538,116 for this item, the claim was adjusted to a differential of €188,116 after subtracting €350,000 provided earlier. The court confirmed the interpretation of the agreement signed on 1 December 2009, determining that acceptance of the debt was definitive and that the seventh clause on the update of the Tarifas Máximas Empresariales (TME) only governed the future continuation of the increase in costs per work shift, but did not condition recognition of the debt already incurred. Based on these findings, the judgment upheld the validity of the evidentiary assessment carried out at first instance, confirmed the principal conviction in full, and ordered the loss of the deposit lodged by the appellant party in order to appeal.
The article La Luz Market convicted at Las Palmas port for using stevedoring money to buy shares with promissory notes was first published on canarymaritime.com.
