SC decision to fine Roxas raises questions on timing
by PURPLE S. ROMERO, abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak | 08/19/2008 11:56 PM
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While Court of Appeals (CA) Justice Vicente Roxas is currently in hot water for allegedly acting with ‘undue haste’ on the case between Meralco and the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), he was found to have been sitting on another case. This cost him P15,000 as the Supreme Court en banc fined him Tuesday for unwarranted delayed action on two motions for reconsideration filed in 2006 and 2007.
In a 15-page resolution penned by Justice Renato Corona, the Supreme Court (SC) found Roxas guilty of undue delay after he failed to resolve the motions for reconsideration filed by Victoriano Orocio, legal counsel of the employees of the National Power Corporation (NPC), for an October 31, 2006 resolution and a January 29, 2007 decision of the Court of Appeals, with Roxas as the ponente.
Aside from the fine, the High Tribunal also cautioned Roxas from committing another judicial mishap as further violations would be meted with harsher punishments.
“Justice Roxas is sternly warned that the commission of any act of impropriety in the future will merit a more severe penalty,” Corona wrote.
The Supreme Court ruled that Roxas violated Section 9(1) Rule 140 of the Rules of Court and Sec.5 Canon 6 of the New Judicial Conduct for the Philippine Judiciary after the motions of reconsideration filed by Orocio moved at a snail’s pace under Roxas’s discretion.
Speedy resolution
The timing of the High Court’s decision on Roxas has raised questions. In the SC investigating panel hearing today, Justice Jose Sabio and Presiding Justice Conrado Vasquez asked Roxas about his pending administrative case with the SC.
Then, hours later, SC spokesman Midas Marquez called a press conference to announce the decision.
We learned that the administrative case against Roxas took about three weeks for Corona to decide. Usually, it takes about six months to two years to act on these cases.
Lawyers tell us that many, if not all, judges and justices commit the same offense: delay in deciding motion for reconsideration.
Reporters who have been covering the beat found this unusual—as decisions on administrative cases of justices are not routinely made public.
Background
Orocio, who served as counsel of the NPC employees in a civil case against the power distributor, filed a motion for his charging lien worth 15 percent of the assets awarded to his clients at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC) after the warring parties reached an amicable settlement in 2006.
The RTC court issued a writ of execution in his favor on July 25, 2006. However, the writ never came into fruition after NPC directors Edmund Angulan and Lorna Dy sought for a temporary restraining order from the Sixteenth Division of the appellate court.
The TRO was issued on August 26, 2006, with Roxas as the ponente.
This was followed by an October 31, 2006 resolution, where the court granted a writ of preliminary injunction earlier prayed for by the NPC on August 22,2006.
Orocio countered the resolution and filed a motion for reconsideration on November 6 the same year. Following the absence of a response, he knocked on the court’s door on December 12, 2006 with a manifestation with urgent motion to resolve.
However, his motion for reconsideration of the October 31, 2006 resolution gathered dust, and remained pending up to this day.
Roxas reduced lawyer’s fee
Orocio also charged Roxas with dishonesty and grave misconduct after the latter specified his charging fees at a measly P3,512.00 in his January 29, 2007 decision, which also debunked a prior RTC order granting Orocio his 15 percent share in the assets collected by the NPC employees from the settlement of the civil case.
The aggrieved lawyer filed a motion for reconsideration of the above decision on February 21, 2007. In his motion, Orocio hit Roxas’s decision as smacked with "fabrication, distortion and misrepresentation of facts."
However, Roxas acted only on the motion seven months after, on September 27, 2007.
This prompted Orocio to file an administrative complaint against the embattled justice, who is now at the center of an investigation following accusations of "unceremoniously" excluding fellow CA justices Jose Sabio Jr. and Myrna Dimaranan-Vidal from the Meralco-GSIS case.
Roxas penned the May 30, 2008 Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) which enjoined the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from implementing its show cause order against Anthony Rosete, corporate secretary of the Lopez-owned utility.
In his comment to Orocio’s second motion for reconsideration however, Roxas attacked Orocio’s move as an act of vendetta. “This case was simply a harassment suit filed by a losing litigant,” he said adding that Orocio drew blood because his fees were reduced.
SC overturned OCA
The Office of the Court Administrator (OCA), which initially probed the complaint, ruled that Roxas acted with undue delay on the motion for reconsideration on the October 2006 resolution but junked Orocio’s charges of dishonesty, grave misconduct and violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct.
The OCA dismissed the said charges on the ground that the assailed January 2007 decision was rendered as a "collective judgment" of the appellate court, resulting from deliberations and consultations among justices.
The body also doused cold water on Orocio’s allegations that Roxas did not efficiently resolve his second motion for consideration after the NPC lawyer failed to specify the date of the appellate court’s receipt of the NPC comment on his second motion.
Based on these findings, the OCA recommended to the Supreme Court to fine Roxas P10,500.
The Supreme Court, however, overturned OCA’s findings on Orocio’s motion for reconsideration on the January 2007 decision and increased Roxas’s fine to P15,000.
“While actions on motions, papers, and other incidents of a case pending in the Court of Appeals are actions of that court as a collegial body, the 2002 Internal Rules of the Court of Appeals provides that it is the ponente who initiates the actions on said motions, papers, and pleadings…He has the primary responsibility of ensuring that the pending incidents in a case assigned to him are properly and promptly acted on,” the High Tribunal stated in its decision.
The Supreme Court explained that under Section 3, Rule 52 of the IRCA, a motion for reconsideration should be resolved within 90 days upon submission for resolution.
Roxas, the Court said, should have resolved Orocio’s second motion for reconsideration on June 27, 2007, not three months later, stressing that ‘justice delayed is justice denied.’
Prior case
The Supreme Court’s admonition of Roxas came at the heels of a prior decision which absolved him of displaying partiality and gross ignorance of the law in a case which involved another intra-corporate battle, this time being that of between Philippine Holdings Corporation (PHC) and Philippine Communications Satellite Corporation (PHILCOMSAT).
The row between the two is an aftermath of the looting scandal involving government stakeholders in the PHC. PHILCOMSAT, a sequestered company, owns 81 percent of the PHC.
PHILCOMSAT President Erlinda Bildner filed an administrative complaint against Roxas after he issued an order which barred the SEC from calling a stockholders’ meeting for PHC despite an existing memorandum of understanding among stockholders which allowed the conduct of such meeting.
Roxas issued the said order upon the petition of Manuel Nieto Jr., president of PHC. Nieto, like Meralco, argued that the SEC has no jurisdiction over intra-corporate disputes.
However, Nieto filed a motion to withdraw said petition, which Roxas junked.
Bildner, in her complaint, said that Roxas should have resolved Nieto’s motion for the withdrawal of his petition first before issuing the order which stopped the stockholders’ meeting.
However, just last June, the Supreme Court dismissed Ilusurio’s complaint citing that the “decision to grant or deny the motion to withdraw is discretionary on the part of the judge.”
Corona was on leave when the Supreme Court voted on said decision.
