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source : staff   
Friday, 08 August 2008 14:26
Tension gripped the second hearing on the alleged “improprieties” in the Court of Appeals as the investigation panel led by retired Justice Carolina Griño-Aquino zeroed in on the unresolved motions, lack of deliberation, and other procedural loopholes in the run-up to the signing of a July 8 ‘draft’ of the decision on the Meralco vs Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) case.

The power utility is in a heated legal battle with GSIS over the contentious proxy validation held last May 27, where the Lopez group kept control of Meralco.

Justice Myrna Dimaranan-Vidal, in her July 24 letter to appellate court Presiding Justice Conrado Vasquez, alleged that Justice Vicente Roxas asked her to sign a draft of a decision favoring the power utility on July 8, before the Solicitor General and Meralco submitted their respective memoranda on July 10.

The said decision “never saw the light of the day,” according to Justice Jose Sabio Jr., who also mentioned the same incident in his July 26 letter to Vasquez.

In the said communication, Sabio accused justices Roxas, Bienvenido Reyes and Apolinario Bruselas of the eighth division of “unceremoniously” easing him and Vidal out of the case.

The 8th division later promulgated a decision on July 23 which barred the Securities and Exchange Commission from implementing a show cause order against Anthony Rosete, corporate secretary of Meralco.


Unresolved motions
During Vidal’s cross-examination, retired Justice Romeo Callejo, a member of the investigation panel along with Justice Flerida Romero, asked the CA justice if she found the following in the rollo of the Meralco-GSIS case before the June 23 hearing:

a.    a motion filed by GSIS on May 30 to lift the temporary restraining order issued by the 9th  Division, then chaired by Sabio, on the same day.
b.    another motion filed by the government pension system asking Roxas to inhibit himself from the case for he allegedly met with the Meralco lawyers in the morning of the issuance of the TRO.

Vidal replied in the negative. Callejo said that the above motions are still pending, and should have been resolved first before any hearing was held in accordance with Rule 5 Section 3 of the Internal Rules of the Court of Appeals (IRCA).

“Justice Roxas must first resolve in writing the motion on his inhibition. It was improper for the court to continue with the hearing,” Callejo said.

In his July 24 response to Roxas’s interpleader motion and Reyes’s letters, both of which inquired what division should handle the Meralco-GSIS case following the return of designated 9th Division chairman Reyes from leave, Vasquez noted the absence of action on the said motions.

“On record shows the unresolved respondent GSIS’s urgent ex-parte motion to inhibit Justice Roxas from the case. More importantly, there is as well a pending urgent motion to lift temporary restraining order and to hold its enforcement in abeyance.”

“The pendency of the motion for inhibition and/or motion for reconsideration on the issuance of the temporary restraining order, to my mind, have a bearing and will greatly affect the application of the provision of Section 2 of Rule VI of the IRCA,”  he said.


Training bag
Aquino and Callejo also raised questions on the manner of Roxas’s delivery of his draft of the decision to Vidal on July 8.

“Justice Roxas went to your chamber with a traveling bag. Isn’t that unusual?” Callejo asked Vidal, who said that copies of the alleged draft of the decision where placed inside the bag.
 
Callejo later added that he found it “strange” that Roxas personally carried copies of the said draft of the decision.

The two justices also questioned the haste by which Vidal signed Roxas’s ponencia following the lack of memoranda from the parties, which were to be submitted on July 10, two days after Vidal signed Roxas’s draft of the decision.

Vidal said she signed it because Roxas said “it was urgent.”

Callejo furthered asked if the 9th Division held deliberations prior to Vidal’s signing of the ponencia.

Vidal answered “none.” She reiterated that she signed the decision due to the urgency raised by Roxas as the TRO was set to lapse on July 30.

In response, Callejo told Vidal to “not just rely on the urgency told to you by a colleague. Act on your own,” adding that prudence in handling cases “is the only way we could serve the public judiciously.”


No rules committee?
Meanwhile, Sabio said that he does not have copies of the following communication attached to the opinion of Rules Committee chair Justice Edgardo Cruz dated June 20:

a.    letter of Reyes to Vasquez dated June 19, where Reyes, who just returned from leave, asked who should, between him and Sabio, preside over the Meralco-GSIS case.
b.    June 20 memoranda of Vasquez to Cruz, where the presiding justice asked the rules committee to address the issue deemed ‘urgent’.

Cruz, in his June 20 opinion, said that Reyes should take over the Meralco-GSIS case, then handled by Sabio, in concurrence with Sec. 2 Rule VI of the IRCA which stipulates that if actions in proceedings such as “giving due course, granting writ of preliminary injunction, new trial and execution in pending appeal” have been taken, the case should remain with the justice to whom the study of the case has been assigned regardless of transfer.

Abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak, in a prior special report, stated that the said opinion of Cruz has been sidelined, causing the internal rift among the justices in the appellate court to go out of hand.   
 
Sabio contested, however, that Cruz did not specify that he rendered his opinion in his capacity as the chair of the rules committee, to which Cruz agreed. But Cruz reasoned that he did not assert his authority as rules committee head because the committee did not conduct a deliberation on the query of Reyes, following its purported urgency.

Callejo said that “in hindsight,” Sabio should have asked for the committee to convene on the chairmanship row as a body.

Sabio replied that he did not do so because the rules committee, at that time, was “nonexistent.” In an interview during recess, Vasquez said that after Justice Roberto Barrios died last year, the committee has yet to officially carry out its mandate with a complete set of members.
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