Sentury and former employee go to court

On September 22, the Qingdao court finally ruled on the “property damage compensation dispute” between Sentury Tire and one of its former employees, Wang. It is reported that the lawsuit had a first-instance judgment in 2021. Subsequently, Sentury filed an appeal. In addition to the “property damage compensation dispute”, the two sides also went to court on the “labour dispute” issue, which completed the first and second instance judgments in 2021.

Wang was the deputy director of Sentury Tire’s logistics department, responsible for warehouse management, tyre sorting and delivery. One of the reasons Sentury filed a lawsuit against the former employee was that Wang was responsible for a quality accident involving more than 1,000 studded snow tyres.

According to the tyre manufacturer, before the accident, Wang had participated in a meeting related to the studded tyres’ appearance and quality and signed the meeting summary. Sentury believes that this signed meeting summary can prove that Wang knows the studded tyres’ quality standard requirements. The tyre company said Wang was responsible for judging the appearance of the studded tyres before the accident, and although Wang knew the tyre quality standard requirements, he still failed to make his department implement the corresponding standards, resulting in the quality accident.

Tyrepress noted that Sentury had provided a notification in the previous “labour dispute” lawsuit, which showed: “The customer (of Sentury) complained about missing studs in a batch of 1,700 tyres sent to (their) Finnish customers. And blemishes occurred near the nail holes where the studs were missing. There are a total of 1,358 tyres with missing studs and blemishes. The dereliction of duty by the relevant personnel caused the tyres to flow into the market, resulting in the quality accident, and caused a great loss to the company’s reputation.…… One of the reasons (for this accident) is that the finished product warehouse, as the last process of tyre inspection and delivery, did not take the lead in handling the quality problems of the missing studs and blemishes, and (the warehouse managers) did not seal the tyres with missing studs in time.”

In addition, Sentury proposed that Wang should also be responsible for a tyre backlog accident. Another report provided by this company shows: “One of the reasons (for the tyre backlog accident) is that the person in charge of the logistics department did not coordinate the resources to solve the problem, which caused the situation to get out of control. Meanwhile, the (responsible person) was not meticulous about the work arrangement, and the internal management was poor, and (responsible person) did not communicate with the sales logistics team in time to solve the problem.”

Regarding the “property damage compensation”, Sentury asked Wang to be responsible for the economic losses caused by the two accidents. Previously, the court of the first instance held that Wang and Sentury were not equal subjects, and the dispute between the two parties was not the personal and property relationship between equal subjects. Therefore, the court rejected Sentury’s lawsuit against Wang. The second instance upheld the judgment of the first instance.