Published:  00:00 Wednesday - March 30, 2011

Vietnam Airlines on Monday said it had got advantage in a protracted lawsuit filed by Italian lawyer Maurizio Liberati whom the airline has always insisted it has nothing to do with.

The national flag airline said in a statement that a Paris-based court of instance had turned down Liberati’s request for the airline’s 5.2 million euro held in a bank account of the bar association of Paris to be transferred to the Italian at a recent hearing.

The court ruled at the hearing on March 4 that the 5.2 million euro would continue to remain in the association’s account. The carrier had deposited this amount of money to be eligible to defend itself at any hearings of the case brought up by Liberati in 1994.

The airline described the Paris-based court’s ruling as “the first positive sign” of its efforts to appeal against the verdicts in favor of the plaintiff and to fight against a case suspected of fraud as claimed by the airline.

The airline said it had worked hard with its lawyers in France and Italy to prepare evidence and arguments after it knew that Liberati had asked the chief judge of the court in France to order the transfer of the money to him.

The airline said in 2009 that it would count on every possible way within its capacity to reverse the lawsuit initiated in Italy after having learned that the Rome Tribunal Court had dismissed its appeal to abort the ruling in 2000 in favor of Liberati.

Since the 2000 verdict, Vietnam Airlines had lodged appeals to various Italian courts in desperate search of justice and written to the heads of competent courts and bar associations in Italy and France to rally for their fair and objective judgment of the suit. The carrier denied any legal link with the Italian as it did not sign any employment agreement with the plaintiff.

The airline said its agreement to hire Falcomar Co. in 1992 as its ticket sales agency in Italy clarifies the carrier shall not hold any responsibility arising out of any agreement/contract between Falcomar and any third party. Therefore, Vietnam Airlines said Liberati’s legal move to request Falcomar and it to pay him 538 million lira for the work he allegedly did from September 1991 to December 1992 for Falcomar was groundless.

 The point was that the airline did not send any representative to the first-instance hearing held by the Roma Tribunal Court in November 1995. The airline was informed of the summons for the first hearing, but did not dispatch any representative there since it was convinced it was not a party involved in the case.

Source: The Saigon times