Del Castillo returns to work after surgery

MANILA, Philippines - Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo reported for work yesterday.

On advice of his doctors, Del Castillo started reviewing drafts of decisions and resolutions in cases expected to be tackled at the SC summer session in Baguio City next month.

Del Castillo remained in his office without speaking to the media.

However, members of his staff told The STAR that he had recovered from his heart bypass operation last February.

He took a wellness leave that lapsed last March 12, and then filed sick leave for 11 days.

Del Castillo has not yet disclosed whether he would

join the full-court session in Baguio City on April 17, they added.

Del Castillo is facing impeachment in the House of Representatives over allegations of plagiarism, twisting of cited materials and gross neglect for the unanimous SC ruling he penned in October 2010, which dismissed the petition 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 Japan.

The SC had 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,” read the SC decision.

“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.”