The Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision granting P310 million in monetary award to listed technology company DFNN Inc. as compensation for the termination of its equipment lease agreement with state-owned Philippine Charity and Sweepstakes Office 11 years ago.
DFNN said in a disclosure to the stock exchange it received a copy of the CA decision dismissing the petition filed by PCSO, which questioned the P310-million monetary award granted by the Makati regional trial court.
The appellate court declared “the Makati RTC correctly granted DFNN’s petition for correction, which petition correctly observed the proper procedure for the correction of an evident miscalculation of figures in the arbitral award.”
CA said it did not find merit in PCSO’s contentions and affirmed the ruling of Makati RTC granting the P310 million plus interest monetary award to DFNN.
DFNN president and chief executive Ramon Garcia Jr. said the company was willing to forge a mutually acceptable settlement with PCSO.
“While we are happy with the favorable ruling by the Court of Appeals, we would also like to express our willingness to forge a mutually acceptable settlement agreement with the present PCSO management,” Garcia said.
The ELA was executed by DFNN with PCSO in April 9, 2003. Under the agreement, PCSO agreed to exclusively lease from DFNN all the hardware, software and know how to design and develop a system that would allow the company to accept and process bets from personal communication device users nationwide or online betting.
On April 5, 2005, prior to the impending commercial operation of the system, DFNN was informed of PCSO’s decision to terminate the ELA.
PCSO then began negotiating with third parties to provide new wireless lotto betting system, thus violating its obligation under the ELA to exclusively lease the system from DFNN.