Belo twits Facebook user: Go to court, not to media

MANILA, Philippines - The camp of celebrity cosmetic surgeon Vicky Belo is challenging activist-lawyer Argee Guevarra, who faces a libel suit for allegedly maligning her in his Facebook shoutouts, to just face the issues in court.

Lawyer Adel Tamano, spokesman of the Belo Medical Group, dared Guevarra to “go to the proper forum, which are the courts of law, instead of engaging in trial by publicity.”

“To date… Guevarra has not filed any case with the courts of law against the Belo Medical Group, which is the proper procedure as it will allow all the parties to present their side. In fact, at the hearing of the libel case, Guevarra did not even attend the preliminary investigation and has opted instead to make statements to the press,” he said in a statement sent to The STAR.

Tamano said Belo was only forced to file the libel case against Guevarra “to protect her good name and reputation.”

He is reacting to a reported statement by Guevarra, who said Belo’s complaint against him will be “an opportunity to invite public attention to the hazards of cosmetic surgery clinics performing surgeries with untrained and unskilled medical practitioners and advertising such services as safe.”

“We hope to ring alarm bells at the health department against the proliferation of such colorum clinics, which is destroying the country’s medical tourism industry and earning for the country the moniker of being Asia’s No. 1 Chop Shop,” Guevarra said in a statement sent to The STAR.

Belo and the BMG filed the suit against Guevarra at the Office of the City Prosecutor in Taytay, Rizal.

Belo protested Guevarra’s shoutouts in Facebook, a popular social networking site, referring to her as “Reyna ng Kaplastikan, Reyna ng Kapalpakan” (Queen of False Pretenses, Queen of Incompetence) and updates calling for a national patients’ boycott of Belo clinics.

Guevarra is the lawyer of Josefina Norcio, who sued the BMG for botched butt augmentation procedures using the substance hydrogel.

He said Belo, despite the popularity of her clinics both in the Philippines and abroad, is not licensed by the Philippine Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (PAPRAS) to perform cosmetic surgery procedures.

The suit is the first Facebook libel case in the world where the complainant does not even belong to the defendant’s network of Facebook friends, Guevarra said.

A previous Facebook libel case was, however, filed in the United Kingdom where businessman Mathew Firsht sued a former school friend over a false personal profile status on the site, which included private information about him and untrue allegations about his sexual orientation.

The libel suit against Guevarra was initiated through Belo’s general manager, who managed to add herself to Guevarra’s network of 1,472 friends.

Guevarra seeks to defend himself all the way to the Supreme Court in order to elicit jurisprudence regarding Internet-based libel suits.