Drawn-out court proceedings

Drawn-out court proceedings

My company was legally appointed in 1994 as the sole agent in
Indonesia of German firm Eickhorn to import and sell commando-
type combat knives from Solingen, Germany, to an Indonesian state
institution as the authorized end-user. A number of orders were
successfully completed and payments were remitted to Germany.

However, the commissions agreed upon as per contract have
never been paid. Instead fake credit notes were issued. Repeated
pleas have not yielded any results, which led us to take the
dispute to a court of law in Wuppertal, German. During the many
court sessions since 1996, we have submitted various pieces of
evidence that support our right to the commissions. We went as
far as to ask the court to allow our side to provide expert
witnesses, but our request was rejected. Eickhorn, on the other
hand, was allowed by the German court to present expert
witnesses.

The case has been ongoing for about eight years without a
verdict being issued. In April 2004, the presiding judge issued a
summons for both parties to appear before the court on July 1.
However, on June 29, we learned that the hearing had been
postponed until December 2004 on the grounds that the presiding
judge had retired.

We were perplexed by this sudden postponement, but waited in
good faith for the December hearing.

We were recently advised by our lawyer that another German
company had filed a bankruptcy petition against Eickhorn and our
hearing had subsequently been canceled. When this happened, our
lawyer initially said he would file a claim in the insolvency
proceedings, but has since withdrawn from the case, leaving us
absolutely no hope at this late stage.

Eight years for such an injustice to be rectified is a long
time indeed, but the fact that it is unlikely to be rectified at
all could have disastrous repercussions on business relations
between our two countries.

It is our hope that there is some way in which the German
Embassy, or the German-Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (EKONID), can help in facilitating a final and just
settlement to our payment claim from Eickhorn.

HERLINA, Jakarta