Del Castillo extends leave

MANILA, Philippines - Justice Mariano del Castillo has extended his leave of absence from the Supreme Court (SC) after recently undergoing a heart bypass operation.

Del Castillo filed with the high court a nine-day sick leave last Monday when his earlier wellness leave lapsed, members of his staff confirmed to The STAR yesterday.

They said the justice, who is facing impeachment in the House of Representatives over a plagiarism charge, would not be reporting to work from March 13 to 21 to continue recovery from surgery.

This means he is expected to return to office at the SC on March 22.

SC spokesman Midas Marquez denied reports that Del Castillo already tendered his resignation or filed for early retirement after the House justice committee voted 38-10 last Feb. 22 to recommend his impeachment to the plenary.

“Those are just rumors because apparently he is just on leave,” Marquez told The STAR, adding that Del Castillo’s heart bypass operation was a success.

“He underwent bypass several years ago, but apparently the bypass was not very successful because the arteries – except for one – remained clumped, therefore there is also some degree of urgency that he undergoes another bypass, another procedure,” he explained.

He said the operation was originally set last January, but was moved a month later.

Text messages circulated on Monday afternoon that Del Castillo had already resigned from his post allegedly to evade impeachment trial and after being prodded by his brothers in the Aquila Legis fraternity.

Del Castillo is facing impeachment in the House of Representatives over allegations of plagiarism, twisting of cited materials and gross neglect for the SC ruling he wrote in October 2010 junking the bid of over 70 Filipino women abused during World War II to compel the government to support their demands for official apology and other reparations from Tokyo.

Marquez already expressed doubts on reports that the justice was considering resigning or availing of early retirement.

He also lamented the House’s action on the complaint filed by UP lawyer Harry Roque Jr. when the high tribunal already ruled in October 2010 that the allegations lacked merit.

“It’s unfortunate that they seemed not to have taken consideration of that decision by the court,” he said.

The SC already cleared Del Castillo of the plagiarism charge.

“The mistake of Justice Del Castillo’s researcher is that, after the Justice had decided what texts, passages and citations were to be retained including those from (authors), and when she was already cleaning up her work and deleting all subject tags, she unintentionally deleted the footnotes that went with such tags – with disastrous effect,” the Court explained.

“On occasions judges and justices have mistakenly cited the wrong sources, failed to use quotation marks, inadvertently omitted necessary information from footnotes or endnotes. But these do not, in every case, amount to misconduct. Only errors that are tainted with fraud, corruption or malice are subject of disciplinary action,” it stressed.

The SC also junked as “mystery” the allegation of lawyers of petitioners in the case led by Roque that the magistrate twisted the points from the sources to justify his ruling.