Maltese company vindicated in Parliament stone legal saga

The Court of Appeal has confirmed a judgement ordering the Italian company responsible for the construction of the facade for the new parliament in Valletta to pay its Maltese stone suppliers.

Italian company CFF Filiberti Srl had filed an appeal against a judgement ordering it to pay €31,500 to Q Stone – the two companies are embroiled in several court cases, with Filiberti accusing its Maltese supplier of furnishing inferior quality stone, and Q Stone accusing the Italians of non-payment.

The contractual disagreement was featured in the Italian media. Last February, presenters from Italian TV programme Le Iene had ambushed the Prime Minister as he attended an event in Malta, asking him questions about the issue.

In 2011, CFF Filiberti Srl had been tasked by the BIB Joint Venture, the main contractor responsible for the construction of the Renzo Piano parliament, with constructing the cladding of the façade while Q-Stone Ltd was nominated supplier of the stone.

Originally, the Italian contractor had complained of delays due to the quality of the stone, which was excavated from Gozo and shipped to its Parma plant, where it was cut into thousands of different shapes before being shipped back to Malta. Filiberti claimed that it ended up shipping more than 200 extra truckloads of stone to satisfy the client.

“The reality is that Filiberti was trying to delay justice in view that he owed money to several parties,” Q Stone told MaltaToday. “Today he lost his first in a series of court cases for money owed.” The Maltese stone supplier pointed out that in spite of their case contesting the quality of the stone, Filiberti had continued to take delivery of it – indeed the new Parliament has since been fully constructed and is operational.

Mr Justice Lawrence Mintoff had previously upheld Q Stone’s claim, in the absence of proof to the contrary being exhibited by the Italian company. Although CFF Filiberti had filed an appeal in July last year, this had been declared abandoned after the company failed to appear in court.

CFF Filiberti had insisted that it had been notified with the wrong date for the hearing – 3rd September 2015 – when it should have been 18th May, 2015. Filiberti's lawyer, Franco Galea, had argued that it could never have filed the appeal correctly, for this reason.

But lawyer Maxilene Pace, representing Q Stone, had pointed out that, while it was true that the Italian judicial authorities had delivered the notification after the case had been declared abandoned, Filiberti had already received a postal notification which was valid for the purposes of Maltese law.

CFF Filiberti could therefore not request a rehearing of the appeal as it had failed to appear for its appeal, despite being duly notified in the post. Furthermore, she argued that it was common practice for two parallel methods of notification to be adopted with regard to foreign companies and that this was also in accordance with the law. 

In a decision handed down on Friday, Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri, and Justices Giannino Caruana Demajo and Noel Cuschieri, in the Court of Appeal in its superior jurisdiction, held that Filiberti had evidently been notified twice by Q Stone, once by post in May last year, before another summons was subsequently sent through the Italian judicial authorities. The fact that two notifications were sent did not render the first one invalid, as multiple notification attempts are often filed together to ensure that notification takes place, said the court, holding the notification to be “perfectly valid.”