Refutations September 19, 2006

I WROTE about it last month -- the case of Teresita Barque Hernandez vs Severino Manotok. The case seemed fairly straightforward. Hernandez had long owned a 34-hectare land in Quezon City beside Ayala Heights, bequeathed to her by her father Homer Barque. Her claim to it was challenged by Manotok, who lost the challenge.

First, the Land Registration Authority ruled that the land indeed belonged to Hernandez. The Court of Appeals agreed with its decision. The Supreme Court upheld it. For good reason: Hernandez’s papers were ironclad, Manotok’s was shot full of holes.

But all that seemed well would not turn out well. Unable to reconcile himself with justice, retired Justice Florentino P. Feliciano wrote Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban and asked that the case be reopened with all the justices, and not just a division, sitting in judgment. The letter violated all the rules of ethics and fair play, quite apart from all the laws of God and man in this country. Supreme Court rules state clearly that a plea of this sort may be entered only before, and not after, a division of the Supreme Court has made its ruling. After the division has ruled, nothing more can be done about it. Its judgment is final and executory.

Is this a case where new evidence has been found that could possibly save the life of a man about to be hanged, which behooves rousing up St. Peter to demand the gates of heaven itself be opened? Not at all. This is not a case involving life and death, this is a case involving property. This is not a case involving new evidence, this is a case involving an old and discredited one. This is not a case that may be opened, this is a case that is more shut than the metal doors of a safe in a Swiss bank.

Why did Feliciano, a former justice who has reached an age when people think of leaving their own heirs an example to follow, do something as breathtaking as this? Ask him. I did say at the end of that column that if his plea prospered, I can only advise readers to take to the hills or abroad since they are more likely to find justice there than here.

Well, Feliciano’s plea has prospered.

Last Aug. 30, Hernandez’s lawyers received a letter from the clerk of court of the Supreme Court saying the Court had resolved en banc on Aug. 22 to reset the case for oral argument on Oct. 3 at the Supreme Court Building. Hernandez’s lawyers were being summoned for it.

It was a classic in brevity. It was also a classic in perfidy. One can only imagine the shock of Hernandez’s lawyers when they received the summons. It was so -- unthinkable. As Jose Flaminiano would write later on in reply to the summons, several things are monumentally wrong with it:

First, the Court cites no reason why it effectively reopened a case that was beyond reopening. Well, how can it? It is not hard to imagine the kind of bind it was in. If it mentioned that the reason for reopening the case was Feliciano’s letter, it stood to be suspected of supreme pakikisama (accommodation), or worse of giving in to supreme temptation. If it did not and left the reason unspecified, it stood to be pilloried for supreme folly. Clearly, it thought supreme folly was much the lesser evil. Such has life gotten in these parts the one institution tasked with showing supreme wisdom has fallen to this pass.

Second, the “respondents were neither notified nor afforded the opportunity to be heard” before the Court passed its resolution. The Court itself says that “notice and hearing constitute the essential elements of due process and neither of these elements can be eliminated without running afoul of the constitutional guarantee.” The speed and surreptitiousness with which the Court sprung the dead back to life does not just run afoul of the Constitution, it runs afoul of the Ten Commandments. No, it runs afoul of the very separation between Life and Death.

Third, and most important, the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the (commonsensical) proposition that a person who has won a case with that Court as final arbiter, whether as a division or as an entirety, has won “a vested property right protected by the due process clause of the Constitution.” The inviolability of that is etched in tablet in the Court’s own rules. Appendix E says variously: “A decision or resolution of a Division of the Court…is a decision or resolution of the Supreme Court.” “The Court en banc is not an Appellate Court to which decisions or resolutions of a Division may be appealed.” “A resolution of the Division denying a party’s motion for referral to the Court en banc of any Division case shall be final and not appealable to the court en banc.”

The Supreme Court’s decision to go against these rules is unprecedented, mind-boggling and totally iniquitous. No one provides a better -- no, an ultimate, absolute and irrefutable -- refutation of it than a former justice of the Supreme Court who once said very wisely, without the usual thicket of legalese:

“All litigations must at last come to an end, however unjust the result of error must appear. Otherwise litigation would become even more intolerable than the wrong and injustice it is designed to correct. Considering the litigiousness of our people and the volume of litigation being processed in our judicial system, the importance of that public policy can never be overstressed.”

Who said that?

Why, it was one (ex-)Justice Florentino P. Feliciano.

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Reminder: The “Stop the Killings!” bar tour kicks off on Thursday, Sept. 21 at ’70s Bistro, 46 Anonas St., Quezon City. Bands playing: The Dawn, The Jerks, Sandwich, Sugarfree, Brownman Revival and Radioactive Sago.

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