SC junks complaint vs 3 CA justices

MANILA, Philippines - The Supreme Court (SC) has dismissed the complaint filed by a losing litigant against three justices of the Court of Appeals (CA).

In a 12-page resolution, the high court cleared CA Justices Juan Enriquez Jr., Ramon Bato Jr. and Florito Macalino and dismissed the administrative complaint filed by Oscar Ongjoco.

“Judicial officers do not have to suffer the brunt of unsuccessful or dissatisfied litigants’ baseless and false imputations of their violating the Constitution in resolving their cases and of harboring bias and partiality towards the adverse parties,” read the ruling penned by Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin.

The high court instead turned its ire on the complainant and ordered him to submit an explanation why he should not be punished for indirect contempt “for degrading the judicial office of respondent Associate Justices of the Court of Appeals, and for interfering with the due performance of their work for the Judiciary.”

Ongjoco, who claimed to be chairman of the board and chief executive officer of FH-GYMN Multi-Purpose and Transport Service Cooperative, was given 10 days to comply with the order.

The case stemmed from the administrative complaint filed by Ongjoco in June last year accusing the three CA magistrates of rendering an arbitrary and baseless decision unfavorable to his firm when they resolved his case in the CA’s sixth division.

FH-GYMN filed a graft complaint with the Deputy Ombudsman for Luzon against San Jose del Monte City Councilors in Bulacan, who are members of the Committee on Transportation and Communications, for uttering statements against FH-GYMN and denying its request to authorize Ongjoco as its chairman to issue motorized tricycle operators permit to its members.

When the Ombudsman dismissed the complaint for insufficiency of evidence, FH-GYMN elevated the case to the appellate court, which later denied FH-GYMN’s petition for review and its motion for reconsideration.

The SC held that the CA’s Sixth Division’s decision showed that it has complied with the requirements of the Constitution, contrary to Ongjoco’s claims.

“The definitive pronouncement of the CA’s Sixth Division that ‘the Deputy Ombudsman found no substantial evidence to prove that there was interference in the internal affairs of FH-GYMN nor was there a violation of the law by the respondents’ met the constitutional demand for a clear and distinct statement of the facts and the law on which the decision was based,” the SC said.

The high court further held the CA’s Sixth Division had found FH-GYMN did not discharge its burden of giving any evidence to support its allegations as the petitioner.

The SC reminded Ongjoco that to sustain his allegations of misconduct against the three justices, his administrative complaint against them “must rest on the quality of the evidence; and that basing his plain accusations on hunches and speculations would not suffice to hold them administratively liable for rendering the adverse decision.”

“We recognize that unfounded administrative charges against judges really degrade the judicial office, and interfere with the due performance of their work for the Judiciary. Hence, we deem to be warranted to now direct Ongjoco to fully explain his act of filing an utterly baseless charge against respondent Justices,” the SC said.