Close-open August 7, 2006

THERE’S ANOTHER CASE THAT INVOLVES cheating in this country of liars and cheaters. It was brought to my attention recently by some friends of mine. It’s a weird turn of events that threatens the integrity of the Supreme Court itself if the weird turn isn’t stopped dead in its tracks. I was about to say, such as there’s integrity left in the Supreme Court, but that institution has redeemed itself of late with remarkable, and quite unexpected, universal condemnation of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s dictatorial drift.

But enough of the mystery. The case concerns the ownership of a 34-hectare property in Quezon City, beside Ayala Heights. On June 24, 1998, the Land Registration Authority ruled that the tract of land belonged to Homer Barque and his heirs and not to Severino Manotok and family who had been laying claim to it. Indeed, the LRA found that the Manotoks’ title was “sham and spurious.”

The case found its way to the Court of Appeals for adjudication. And the Court of Appeals likewise affirmed in full the findings of the LRA. It reiterated that the title held by the Manotoks was “sham and spurious” and the Barques’ title, as held by heir Teresita Barque Hernandez, “genuine, authentic and existing.”

The Manotoks brought their case to the Supreme Court and once again the Supreme Court, in the form of the Special First Division, upheld the LRA and Court of Appeals. In its Dec. 12, 2005 ruling, the Court affirmed that the property belonged to the Barques. The lawyers of the Manotoks filed a couple of motions for reconsideration but they were denied by the Supreme Court. In its June 19, 2006 resolution, the Court trenchantly said: “The Second Motion for Reconsideration is prohibited pleading … In addition, petitioners failed to cite any compelling reason why this Court should disregard the above rules but merely reiterated the very same grounds relied upon in their First Motion for Reconsideration .… No further pleadings will be entertained. Let entry of judgment be issued.”

It’s easy to see why the LRA, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court had no trouble in ruling on the case. The documents possessed by the Barques are ironclad while those possessed by the Manotoks are, well, to quote the LRA and the courts, sham and spurious. The Manotoks’ title cannot even accurately pinpoint the location of the land, and their Deeds of Conveyance dated 1974 were notarized by a notary public who, according to the Manila RTC clerk of court, “has not submitted his notarial report for the whole year of 1974 up to the whole year of 1976.”

So one would think that all’s well that ends well, an attempt at claiming another’s property is happily foiled, something that doesn’t always end this way in this country. But now comes the strange part, or the weird twist. This has come in the form of two things, both attempting to open with chicanery what justice has shut.

One is an attempt by people in media to discredit the current owner, Teresita Barque Hernandez. Hernandez has been accused of being too impoverished—she is a college teacher—to possibly own such a tract of land. She apparently does not have a tax account number and is merely renting the place she is currently living in.

Two, and more insidiously, is the attempt by former Justice Florentino Feliciano to reopen the case through the backdoor by writing the Chief Justice et al., pleading for the case to be reopened with the Supreme Court sitting en banc—that is, with all the justices present and not just those of the First Division. His arguments rehash the same arguments in the failed motions for reconsideration.

The first is plain wrong, and not a little idiotic. The plain wrong, Hernandez has proven with something whose importance her detractors can’t seem to comprehend, which is documents. She does have a cedula and tax account number, she does own the property she lives in, and she does run small businesses. And yes, she was a college instructor in various schools from 1969 to 1990.

What makes the argument idiotic is that it in fact clinches the case for, and not against, Hernandez. If she isn’t rich, then clearly she had no money to help the LRA, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court see things her way, as the rich in this country are wont to do. If she won the case, it could only have been because the evidence was so glaring even the cynical and corrupt would have balked at trying to twist it. By contrast, all that the opposite idea—that the Manotoks are people of means—suggests is not that they own the property but that they have the means to persuade people in media (I refuse to say journalists) to preach so.

The second has no place in anything remotely to do with law, and it is breathtaking that any lawyer, let alone a former justice, would attempt it. It violates ethics, etiquette and just plain decency. The rules of the Court are clear: You may plead for the Supreme Court to sit on a case en banc rather than just as a division only before any division rules on the case. Not after. Otherwise no case ever gets done. Otherwise you make a travesty of the words, “final and executory.” That was why the Court threw away the earlier pleadings for reconsideration: They are, to use its own words, “prohibited pleadings.”

What madness persuaded Feliciano to go against the very things he was sworn to uphold not too long ago, I leave him to say. “Older and wiser” is not a phrase that seems to apply to the people of this country. Will his former fellows in the Supreme Court go along with him? Well, if they do, I will have only one advice to give readers thenceforth, which is that they take either to the hills or abroad, Jovito Palparan and Lebanon notwithstanding.

They will find neither justice nor a future here.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=13809