Mail dispute finds firm suing post offices
By Zheng Hua (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-05-18 23:18

A company has taken two postal offices in Southwest China's Sichuan Province to demanding 30 million yuan in damages (US$3.6 million) for allegedly having failed to deliver a huge amount of the firm's mail.

Proceedings in the case before the Mianyang Intermediate People's Court opened on Monday.

The lawsuit, which observers say is unprecedented in postal history, finds plaintiff Sichuan Xinghe Constructive Materials Co Ltd seeking recourse for negligence by the post offices, according to Beijing Times.

In March 2002, court documents state, the Chengdu-based Xinghe company reached an agreement with one of the defendants -- the Mianyang Post Office -- to have the carrier deliver some 2.5 million commercial letters across the nation in an "accurate and timely" manner.

The company said it paid postage totalling 592,000 yuan (US$71,600) for the mailings.

However, in October, Xinghe astonishingly discovered some of its mail, which had been loaded into nine vehicles, had been sold to a local waste-recovery company.

A few days later, Li Changchun, a relative of a director at the post office, surrendered to police, confessing that he stole the letters and had sold them for waste.

Xinghe nonetheless filed legal action against the Mianyang and Sichuan post facilities after they rejected its compensation requests.

That was because State postal laws state that postal enterprises are not be held liable for losses of ordinary postal materials, according to the defendants.

Xinghe is a private company manufacturing wall boards and other building materials using straw.

It delivers mountains of commercial letters every year to seek business from across the country.

Mianyang, a city in northwest Sichuan, some 100 kilometres from the provincial capital of Chengdu, hosted the 16th Asia International Stamp Exhibition in November.

During the session, the two sides were unable to come to an agreement upon how many letters failed to be delivered in an "accurate and timely" manner.

The defendant's attorney was quoted by the Beijing Times as saying that except for a few thousand letters that were not retrieved from the trash station, all other letters were delivered.

The plaintiff says that approximately two million letters were not sent.

The defendants admitted it's impossible to check whether the letters made it to their designated addresses because neither deliverers nor recipients are required to register at the post office.

In another twist to the case, the defendants' lawyer noted that Zhang Daorong, another director with the Mianyang Post, lowered the postage greatly in the agreement he privately signed with Xinghe -- a violation of postal regulations. The defendant alleges Zhang had not right to do that. The Mianyang Post Office is asking Xinghe to pay an additional 810,000 yuan (US$98,000) in postage.

Meanwhile, the Mianyang Evening News reported that Zhang has been sentenced to two years in jail on charge of abusing his powers.

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