This case is a international trade dispute case, and because the defendant resides in Shenzhen, we chose to file a lawsuit in the Shenzhen court.
 
In 2020, our client placed an order for Vulkollan and TPU polyether with the agent by email, and the agent issued a proforma invoice to our client’s Italian company by email. The proforma invoice showed the supplier as a company in Shenzhen, but there was no official stamp of the Shenzhen company on the proforma invoice.
 
Our client, an Italian company, paid the purchase price to the Shenzhen company based on the payee information indicated on the proforma invoice, but the agent failed to deliver the goods even after a year past the agreed delivery date. Therefore, our client had no choice but to engage us to file a lawsuit against the agent.
 
In this case, in order to allow more parties to join the case and to hold responsible parties accountable for our client, we named both the agent and the supplier shown on the proforma invoice as defendants, demanding that they jointly bear the refund and compensation responsibility for our client.
 
Ultimately, the judge only ruled that the agent should bear the responsibility for the refund and compensation in this case. The judge’s reasoning is as follows:
 

1.During the negotiation stage of the transaction, it was always the agent and the Italian company who were communicating with each other, and the Shenzhen company did not participate.

2.The agent used the name of the Shenzhen company to sign the contract with the Italian company, and there was no seal of the Shenzhen company on the contract. In addition, in the trial, the Shenzhen company did not acknowledge the act of the agent signing the contract with the Italian company.

3.The Shenzhen company provided evidence to prove that it had transferred the received payment to the agent.

In the end, we successfully recovered the payment and compensation from the agent. This case resolved our client’s troubles satisfactorily.

Excerpts from the judgments