Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1339768
2 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 14 FEBRUARY 2021 NEWS Delivery fee of just €1 per day for orders up to 5 newspapers per address To subscribe 1. Email us your choice of newspapers, recipient's name, address, contact number to production @millermalta.com 2. Forward cheques payable to Miller Distributors Ltd on address: Miller House, Airport Way, Tarxien Road, Luqa LQA1814 Queries on other news- papers and magazines, production@ millermalta.com maltatoday Same-day delivery of your favourite Sunday newspaper Monday-Friday MaltaToday Midweek • €1 BusinessToday • €1.50 Sunday MaltaToday • €1.95 ILLUM • €1.25 Support your favourite newspaper with a subscription https://bit.ly/2X9csmr MATTHEW AGIUS THE Court of Appeal has in- creased – by a multiple of over 23 – the amount of contractual damages awarded to a company over the sale of land at Ta' Qali. On 10 June 1998, plaintiff FourX Limited had bought half of a parcel of land in Ta' Qali from defendant Mediterranean Flower Products Limited. On the same contract, defendant Flower Power (Sales) Limited had been the tenant of the land. Amongst the things agreed on the contract, was that the lessee and the vendor had obliged themselves to vacate the property entirely if there was a possibility of transfer- ring the properties at a price of not less than Lm2,000,000 (€4,658,746). If that was the case, the premises would be va- cated within one year. Failing to do so would incur a penalty of Lm1,000 (€2,329.37) per day of non-compliance, payable to Four X Limited. In December 2007, Four X and MFP entered into a prom- ise of sale with third parties and bound themselves to sell the land at more than Lm2 mil- lion. Therefore Four X called upon the defendants to va- cate the land, but this came to naught as Flower Power (Sales) Limited had not complied and had stayed put. Four X Limited consequently filed a court case against the defendants, in which it was awarded just €65,000, after the court noted that MFP had also unsuccessfully tried to evict Flower Power (Sales) and held that it was impossible for MFP to comply. Both Four X and MFP ap- pealed, one on the amount awarded and interests, while the other argued that it should not have been made to pay at all. The court ruled that the con- tractual obligation of a com- pany to vacate the property did not imply the obligation to procure the property with re- gards the other company. Nei- ther could there have been col- lusion in bad faith between the defendants to disrupt the sale, as it was in the interest of MFP that the sale went through and it had applied for the eviction of Flower Power (Sales). It upheld the appeal filed by MFP and declared that no pen- alty was to be incurred. But the court said the second defend- ant had done absolutely noth- ing to fulfil its obligations. The consequences on the creditor were drastic, with the court noting that it had dis- rupted a sale worth millions of euro, leaving the creditor hold- ing land that he could not do anything with. The court observed that it had no evidence as to when the land was abandoned by Flow- er Power (Sales), aside from a newspaper article in the acts of the case which indicated that on 3 October 2010, the site was open and abandoned. Judges Giannino Caruana Demajo, Tonio Mallia and An- thony Ellul ruled that as the contractually agreed penalty for failing to vacate the prop- erty was Lm1,000 per day, and the penalty had applied for 654 days between December 2008 and October 2010, the amount payable was Lm654,000 (€1,523,410.20) together with interest. Damages on botched Flower Power sale climb to €1.5 million Disused: the Mosta site has long been abandoned