A roughly US$2.5 million judgment, built on a service no one can verify — and what it signals to anyone thinking about doing business in San Luis Potosí
An impossibility
It all hinges on an impossibility. On March 23, 2023, a judicial officer of the Labor Court of the Judicial Power of the State of San Luis Potosí walked up to an apartment on Calle la Mora and handed a stack of legal papers to a man who would not say who he was. According to the officer’s own handwritten record, the man called himself “Bob DeVeros.” Counterintuitively, the document also notes that the man did not identify himself. No identification was produced. No credential was checked. No corporate document was examined. Meanwhile, the man supposedly served, Bob Deveros, was actually at home in the United States, a fact confirmed by passport records as well as official government I-95 travel logs.
And yet, on the strength of this, a foreign company — AccuHealth Technologies — was declared to have been lawfully served and bound to answer in a Mexican labor court, something they knew nothing about until they were informed of the fact that they were the losing party in a judgment worth roughly $2.5 million USD.
Who knew what, when, and where is open to conjecture; what is beyond question, however, is the fact that non-verified facts swayed a court of law in San Luis Potosí. As such, the default judgment was obtained against parties who had no knowledge of the proceeding and no opportunity to defend.
The case (Expediente Laboral 828/2022) is now colloquially being referred to as the Caso Huerta (or Huerta Case), referring to Oscar Gerardo Huerta Pérez, the name of the former contractor of AccuHealth Technologies. It is a case which should concern every investor, manufacturer, and entrepreneur looking at San Luis Potosí as a place to build.
A nearshoring hub built on a promise
San Luis Potosí has spent two decades establishing itself internationally with a reputation for stability, infrastructure, and the rule of law. Global automakers and suppliers responded and established in the state and its capital precisely because foreign capital believed its contracts would be honored and its rights respected in a courtroom.
That promise rests on one assumption above all — that when a company is hauled before a tribunal, it will be properly notified, fairly heard, and judged on evidence. Strip that assumption away, and the rest of the pitch collapses. A jurisdiction where a judgment can be manufactured against a party that was never genuinely served establishes a precedent that has the capacity to spread like wildfire among the international business community in the area.
Inconsistencies and flawed process
Buried in the actuary’s own certification is a remarkable admission: in carrying out the diligence, he was accompanied by the plaintiff himself, the worker Oscar Gerardo Huerta Pérez. In breaking all protocols, the very person who stood to win money from the lawsuit personally guided the neutral officer of the court to the door and to the man identified as the defendant. A process designed to be impartial was conducted arm-in-arm with the opposing side. Additionally, the address served was not linked to AccuHealth Technologies in any way. Each defect alone is troubling. Stacked together — plaintiff-escorted, served on an unidentified man, at a residential address, with photos of a sidewalk standing in for proof — they describe a notification that exists on paper but is riddled with flaws, which it is difficult to believe pass independent scrutiny or muster.
US escalation
What began as a cross-border labor claim is no longer confined to a state courthouse in San Luis Potosí, and has been gathering speed and interest among federal authorities across the border in the USA. That escalation is significant, and it is logical. A judgment obtained through a service that the defendant’s own travel records appear to contradict — then carried across the border and used against U.S.-connected parties and assets — does not stay inside Mexican labor law; it potentially implicates U.S. federal statutes governing fraud and the use of fabricated or fraudulently obtained instruments across state and national lines. When the alleged conduct includes manufacturing the appearance of service on a person who was not in the country, the question stops being “was this a valid labor judgment” and becomes “was this an instrument of fraud.”
The involvement of federal investigators changes the stakes for everyone who touched the proceeding. A flawed judgment can be appealed and unwound. Participation in a scheme to fabricate one is a different category of exposure entirely.
Big questions
There can be little doubt that Expediente Laboral 828/2022, or the Caso Huerta, is much bigger than the sum of its parts, and poses big questions for international, outsourced business in Mexico as well as for the authorities in San Luis Potosí. As a stand-alone case it has remarkable characteristics, but taken in context, the Caso Huerta has the capacity to become a highly significant issue for the outsourcing business community in Mexico
For the San Luis Potosí Post, Ludwig Elias Franz
