Home court advantage

Remember the famous tag: Hoodlums in Robes?

If memory serves me correctly, it was former President Joseph Estrada who coined or made the term popular, as he expressed how certain judges were trigger happy about issuing temporary restraining orders or TROs.

Considering the frequency and ease by which TROs were acquired by lawyers, people began to view TROs as the judicial equivalent of a traffic citation or ticket. In fact things got so out of hand that the Supreme Court back then issued warnings to judges to refrain from issuing TROs unless absolutely necessary.

This week, a legal action in the form of a “motion for Intervention” was filed by five former health secretaries before the Supreme Court, to overturn the orders of the Marikina and Malolos Regional Trial Courts to stop the Department of Health (DOH) from requiring tobacco firms to place pictures depicting the physical damage caused by cigarette smoking on cigarette packs.

If allowed, the DOH would be able to require cigarette manufacturers to print photos of cancerous lungs, as well as breast cancer and throat cancer, which are directly caused by smoking. The graphic photos on cigarette packs, is something that is already done regionally, in fact when I was in Thailand all the cigarette packs had the photos.

I have been following the fight against tobacco companies for several years because I can honestly say that I am one of their victims. After nearly 20 years of smoking, I was forced to stop in 1991 due to a serious infection of Hepa B via donated blood.

Thank God , my body created the necessary anti-bodies so I survived and remain healthy.... except for COPD or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease because of cigarette smoking. Each time my body experiences stress and lowered immunity, the first thing I get is a respiratory or lung infection. So after kicking the habit, I now spend the same amount of money to temporarily cure me of COPD.

Through the years, what has caught my attention in the battle between the DOH and cigarette manufacturers are those who fall under the category: The Usual Suspects.

Every time the government or the DOH tries to restrict or penalize cigarette manufacturers through a policy or a law, the cigarette makers always runs to their friendly neighborhood RTC. To my recollection, at least 95 percent of the petitions filed by cigarette makers with their friendly neighborhood RTC almost always sides with the local cigarette manufacturers.

This scenario reminds of business contracts where the lawyers or company who write the contracts always indicate that “in the event of any suit or legal action, the parties herein agree to go before” their friendly neighborhood court.

Now think about it. Do you honestly expect to get a fair or impartial deal versus a major corporation that is a major employer, a major major taxpayer, who also has home court advantage? Why would a corporation insist on going before their friendly neighborhood RTC unless they were confident of a home court advantage?

If justice and the law are supposed to be fair and impartial, then why can’t litigants meet up in neutral territory where there is no home court advantage and no possibility of political pressure?

Excuse my suspicious mind but if cigarette companies always win even if government policy protects public health, then one has to wonder why?

At the very least those overseeing the RTC judges such as the Supreme Court should start reviewing cases that stink of “home court advantage”.

Whether or not the Supreme Court agrees, the fact is, this problem is one of the reasons why our courts are backed up and clogged with court cases. The motion for intervention filed by the five former health secretaries is a very clear case where the “questionable” decision of RTC judges, now end up on the lap of the Supreme Court.

Just imagine how many more cases are pending before the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court?

I pray that the wise men and women in the Supreme Court will once and for all address the problem of “home court advantage” as well as disciplining judges whose decisions end up being reversed by the higher courts.

I don’t know if the Supreme Court has a “strike 3 and your out” rule on wrong RTC decisions, but if they don’t then there should be one.

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Still on the issue of smoking, I wonder what DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro plans to do or can do about the proliferation of juvenile smokers hanging outside school premises before and after classes.

It is now a regular sight around public high schools, even some elementary schools to see students smoking while sitting on the sidewalks. You can see them buying cigarettes from ambulant vendors or sari-sari stores near the schools.

Sadly the young smokers puff away in plain sight or sometimes even in front of teachers who don’t care or are powerless to do anything.

Back in our school days, if any teacher sees a student smoking the pupil would automatically be a candidate for expulsion. However in our “politically correct” or “socially sensitive” culture, it seems that people are more concerned with the popular than the correct thing to do.

If a public school student is the responsibility of the state, then the school must have some measure of authority and incentive to discipline errant students as well as go after vendors and stores that sell cigarettes to students.

Perhaps Secretary Luistro can meet up with Justice Secretary De Lima to draw up a campaign to protect children from those selling them poison and cancer causing cigarettes. That would be a serious challenge and a perfect opportunity for this Aquino administration to prove that they truly are for the youth!