Makati court junks damage suit vs ex-Solgen

MANILA, Philippines - The Makati City regional trial court has dismissed a damage suit filed by the Villaraza Cruz Marcelo and Angangco Law Office, also known as The Firm, against former solicitor general Frank Chavez.

Judge Elmo Alameda granted a motion to dismiss filed by Chavez, citing forum shopping on the part of The Firm.

Chavez said The Firm had filed 11 separate criminal complaints for libel and other cases against him in various places in the country, including Bohol.

Alameda’s ruling said “filing multiple petitions or complaints constitutes abuse of court processes, which tends to degrade the administration of justice, wreaks havoc upon orderly judicial procedure, and adds to the congestion of the heavily burdened dockets of the courts.”

The court found persuasive the findings of a city prosecutor in one of the 10 libel cases filed by The Firm against Chavez that all the libel complaints are similarly based on the same materials where the subject statements or criticisms made by Chavez appeared.

All the complaints, the court said, could have properly been brought as a collective suit, considering that all partners were supposedly acting for and in behalf of the law firm.  

The court also pointed out that The Firm failed to implead in its complaint the author, editor and publisher of the newspaper where the subject libelous article was published, as well as the interviewer, anchor and/or the television and radio networks which caused the broadcast of the subject interviews.

The court sustained Chavez’s argument that the civil action cannot qualify as an independent civil action precisely because the very rule on independent civil actions bars plaintiff from recovering damages twice or several times for the same act or omission charged in the criminal action.

Among others, the libel cases filed by The Firm accused Chavez of falsely stating that former Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo did not act on the complaints for tax credit scam against a Shell executive because it was a client of The Firm.

Chavez is likewise accused of falsely stating that former Presidential Legal Counsel, now Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, recommended the approval of the PEA-Amari deal to then President Fidel Ramos, only for him to annul it when he decided the case questioning the same.

The Firm further accused Chavez of committing perjury for saying that it was he and lawyer Mario Ongkiko of “Operation Clean Hands” who first filed plunder charges against former military comptroller Carlos Garcia and not former Ombudsman Marcelo.