In a 12-page amended decision, the appellate court’s Special Division of Five (former Eleventh Division), through Associate Justice Danton Bueser, granted ABI’s motion for reconsideration in the case and reversed its earlier ruling on the controversy.
“The motion for reconsideration is granted. The decision dated September 15, 2010, is reversed and set aside. The decision of the RTC in Marikina City is reinstated with modifications.” the CA ruling said.
“San Miguel is ordered to pay Asia Brewery actual and compensatory damages in the amount of P8.538 million with legal interest from the date of the filing of the complaint until fully paid and temperate damages in the amount of P60 million,” the CA said.
Concurring were Associate Justices Noel Tijam, Isaias Dicdican and Normandie Pizzaro. Associate Justice Marlene Gonzales-Sison dissented.
The order requiring the payment of exemplary damages, attorney’s fees and costs of suit stayed.
In its 2008 ruling, the RTC in Marikina found SMC guilty of unfair trade acts and ordered it to pay ABI P133 million in damages.
The trial court held that SMC’s action caused ABI to lose substantial profits.
The lower court noted that by withdrawing the ABI bottles from circulation, SMC effectively disrupted ABI’s marketing and distribution system and deprived it of the profits it could have gained if it was able to reuse the bottles and shells in the normal course of trade.
In its motion for reconsideration, ABI argued that the CA erred when it relied on the so-called ‘swapping agreement to justify San Miguel’s illegal trade practices.”
In a verbal swapping agreement between ABI and SMC in 1990, both companies agreed to recover empty bottles of ABI’s Beer na Beer and SMC’s Pale Pilsen that were mistakenly retrieved by both parties in the normal course of trade. The swapping agreement was in effect only in 1990, 1991 and part of 1992.
The case stemmed from the damage and recovery suit filed by ABI against SMC in 1997 following a court-sanctioned raid at the latter’s three warehouses which yielded 1.6 million bottles of ABI’s Beer na Beer, Carslberg, Manila Beer, Colt 45, Lone Star and Budweiser in various sizes, some of which were still unopened.
The sheriff also seized 128,679 ABI red plastic shells, 468 of which were repainted green with a stamp of the San Miguel logo in white. The inventory excludes “unquantifiable” broken ABI bottles which the sheriff discovered inside another SMC warehouse in Valenzuela City.
The raid was conducted after surveillance showed that SMC was keeping ABI’s bottles and shells in its San Fernando, Pampanga, brewing facility.
