Joseph Bonney/Senior Editor | Apr 12, 2012 2:05PM EDT
Maher Terminals has filed a Federal Maritime Commission complaint alleging the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey discriminated against Maher by giving preferential treatment to rival terminals.
The complaint by Maher, the port’s largest container terminal operator, seeks damages “amounting to a sum of millions to be determined more precisely at hearing.”
Maher accused the port authority of providing Port Newark Container Terminal with rate reductions and other preferential treatment when Mediterranean Shipping Co., Maher’s largest customer, transferred its business to PNCT in October 2009.
The port authority “has an unreasonable practice of providing unduly preferential treatment to ocean carriers and ocean-carrier-affiliated marine terminals that has and continues to unduly prejudice Maher,” the complaint said.
Maher complained the port authority didn’t allow it to bid on a Bayonne, N.J., site where Global Terminal is expanding, and that the port authority unfairly agreed in 2008 to permit APM Terminals to defer $50 million in capital spending obligations.
The complaint also alleges the port authority inconsistently applied its policy of requiring terminals that change ownership to compensate the port authority for its improvements. Maher said the port authority collected approximately $237 million in such payments from the sales several years ago of Maher, PNCT and New York Container Terminal.
A port authority spokesman said the agency had no comment on the case.
Contact Joseph Bonney at jbonney@joc.com. Follow him on Twitter @josephbonney.
