Harassment

The Office of the Ombudsman struck a blow against harassment cases when it minced no words in throwing out one case filed against professionals in the public service. This is a strongly worded ruling that brings reassurance to the ranks of public officers who suffer from wild and whimsical cases filed for the sole purpose of intimidation.

There is a reason why the Ombudsman labors under a deluge of cases filed. The rules are such that it is so easy to file a case against public officers in that forum. Even anonymous complaints are, by force of legal requirement, entertained.

Most of these cases are baseless, intended for purposes other than the public interest. Nevertheless, due investigation needs to be done on them and rulings written out observing the best standards of judicial scholarship.

Note that we operate in an environment characterized by an overpopulation of lawyers and a surfeit of law firms. These professionals make no money unless cases are filed and heard. They have every economic reason to file as many cases as possible. It is the journey, not the destination, enabling this “industry” butter its bread well.

In the regular courts, there are at least fiscals to go over suits filed to determine their merits. The fiscals do junk a lot of cases filed. Still, the court dockets are clogged. It takes years to arrive at a judgment on cases. The situation there is exasperating, to say the least.

The situation is even more exasperating at the Ombudsman. Nuisance suits abound, intending only to pressure public officers or simply make their lives miserable. There is a mountain of cases there and long queue for rulings. It is a situation that could make public officers like discharged policeman-turned-hostage-taker Rolando Mendoza go berserk.

The Ombudsman ruling mentioned above was issued on the suit filed by R-II Builders against officers of the Home Guaranty Corporation (HGC) led by its president, Gonzalo Bolongan, executive vice-president Elmer Cadano, vice presidents Melinda Adriano, Rafael de los Santos, Corazon G. Corpuz, Danilo Javier and Jimmy Sarona.

R-II, it will be recalled, figured in an ugly exchange of paid advertisements with competitors over the Harbor City and Smokey Mountain projects. The same company was at the center of a controversy involving what was called a “midnight deal” where government corporations were to make a huge payout to it. The questioned payout was stopped in the nick of time.

In the nineties, R-II was awarded 79 hectares for the Harbor City project, a private port terminal. To this day, the project remains incomplete.

The amount of land in R-II’s control was later expanded to cover 229 hectares in exchange for building a housing project that would house 3,000 families occupying the old dumpsite nicknamed Smokey Mountain for its constant emission of methane. Since the private company could not raise the financing for the project, government was eventually forced to tap about P3.1 billion from the SSS, the OWWA and the NHA to build the direly needed housing facilities.

The deal has been controversial. Critics of the deal, such as Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, have used the most colorful language to describe it. So many cases, from all sides, were filed around this deal. In so many words, critics of the deal accuse R-II of bloating its actual exposure to the housing project, thereby bloating the amount it wants government to reimburse.

Those housing facilities are now under scrutiny for the quality of construction and, more important, the quality of life of those forced to live there. Notwithstanding, R-II is demanding to be paid for building the housing facility.

The company had filed collection cases against the HGC in order to compel the government corporation to pay up. When HGC sold some land adjacent to the Harbor City project, R-II filed suit against the sale. Manila Judge Mariano de la Cruz was hearing the case.

HGC, for its part, went to the Supreme Court to question Judge de la Cruz’s jurisdiction over the case. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of HGC, saying that the Manila court was not designated as a special commercial court and was therefore not qualified to hear this case.

In addition to the case R-II filed before Judge de la Cruz, the company also charged HGC officers at the Ombudsman with misconduct for allegedly selling the parcel of land too cheaply. A higher sale price would have, no doubt, served R-II’s purposes of scaling up the value of its own project and justifying the collection of a huge reimbursement from government.

Was the parcel of land sold too cheaply?

The Ombudsman discovered that R-II used offers to sell as the basis of its claim that the land HGC sold to La Paz Million Corporation was underpriced. Offers to sell, however, are asking prices subject to negotiation. They ought not to be used as the basis for land valuation.

In fact, HGC’s selling price of P13,300 per square meter was substantially higher than the latest zonal valuation of the property which was set at P9,750 per square meter. The final selling price is also substantially above the HGC’s book value of P10,971 per square meter and significantly above the minimum disposition value of P11,668 per square meter arrived at using the agency’s net effective return method.

In a word, this was a good deal from the point of view of safeguarding government interest. The Ombudsman determined the case filed by R-II to be clearly “unfounded.”

The Ombudsman ruling, understandably, put things most bluntly: “R-II Builders and its officers have been filing unfounded cases against Home Guaranty Corporation (HGC) and its officers in relation to the Smokey Mountain project. This is but a bead in a string of unfounded cases in a vain and unethical attempt to cow HGC officers into submission to the whim of a party seeking to prevent HGC from recovering its guaranty exposure.”