DeHeng Lawyers Representing a Chinese Subcontractor

Won the Lawsuit against an Indian Developer

2020-04-02

On April 1, 2020, a court of the United Arab Emirates ruled in favor of the plaintiff, a Chinese subcontractor, jointly represented by Mr. Jia Huaiyuan, the director of DeHeng Dubai Office and Mr. Saeed Nageeb, a lawyer also from the Dubai Office, against the defendant, an Indian developer.

In August 2015, a Chinese steel structure subcontractor and Line Investment & Property LLC, an Indian developer, entered into a memorandum of understanding under which the former was to provide steel structure design, production and installation services for the latter on a large shopping mall project. After the signature of the memorandum, the Indian developer frequently changed the design, resulting in a drastic increase in the construction costs of the Chinese Subcontract. However, the Indian developer refused to agree to the subcontractor's variation application, and even worse, terminated the contract unilaterally after the project was completed by the Subcontractor, on the ground that the Subcontractor did not provide a performance bond, leading to a significant losses to the Subcontractor.

After several rounds of fruitless negotiations with the Indian developer, the Chinese subcontractor hired Mr. Jia Huaiyuan and Mr. Saeed Nageeb to file a lawsuit against the Indian developer in 2018, requesting compensation from the Defendant for the losses caused by the design change. The Defendant rejected all the claims filed by Plaintiff, and instead filed a counterclaim with the amount of 21 million Diham (about 40 million yuan) against the Plaintiff. To protect the legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese company, for more than a year, the two lawyers had held face-to-face meetings for several times with the client analyzing and demonstrating the case, had collected abundant evidence from both China and the United Arab Emirates,  and completed the cross-border judicial certification of the evidence. Furthermore, the two lawyers also provided expert report to the Court and successfully applies the Court to carry out expert evaluation for the additional construction costs claimed by the Plaintiff, In the end, the Court supported up to 80% of the claims filed by the Chinese subcontractor，and rejected all the counterclaims filed by the defendant.

The success of this lawsuit highlights the professionalism of DeHeng lawyers in providing powerful legal support for Chinese companies overseas. This is also a typical victory obtained by the Chinese companies in oversea lawsuit.