Carpio asked to look into P60-million labor case

MANILA, Philippines - Acting Chief Justice Antonio Carpio has been asked to look into a 2009 ruling of the third division of the Supreme Court on a labor suit against a real estate developer awarding P60 million in compensation to an Australian national who had no working permit.

Eulalio Ganzon, owner of E. Ganzon Inc. (EGI), asked Carpio in a letter last week to investigate the alleged “undue haste and irregularity” in the decision favoring his former business partner, Andrew James McBurnie.

“I respectfully implore you to encourage the third division to carefully review the facts and decide on the merits of our third motion for reconsideration and affirm the November 17, 2009 NLRC (National Labor Relations Commission) decision dismissing the complaint,” the two-page letter read.

“I write to plead for your kind attention in the above case where the decision of the court’s third division, unless reconsidered, stands to seriously undermine the integrity of the High Court,” Ganzon appealed.

The litigant also asked the acting SC chief to elevate his appeal to the full court for resolution.

Ganzon sent a similar letter to Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco Jr., chairman of the high court’s third division.

Last April, Ganzon filed an appeal asking the SC to reconsider its ruling dismissing his second motion for reconsideration.

Ganzon insisted that the ruling in favor of McBurnie was based on patently void and illegal finding of a labor arbiter that supposedly violated Article 40 of the Labor Code which prohibited foreigners from being employed in the country without securing “alien employment permit” from the Department of Labor.

He also argued that McBurnie could not have filed the complaint personally, as required by rules of court, the alleged illegal dismissal case in 2002 because he had left the country in 1999 and had not returned since then.

That was the reason McBurnie failed to attend any of the 14 hearings conducted by labor arbiter Salimathar Nambi on the complaint that was filed in absentia, Ganzon told the SC.