PHILIPPINE NEWS SERVICE — THE fraternity and family ties of the feuding Court of Appeals justices have also been dredged up in the high-stakes battle for control of Manila Electric Co.
GSIS lawyer Estrella Elamparo accused CVC Law, known as “The Firm” in legal circles, of twice manipulating the appellate court’s decisions on the Meralco case through Associate Justice Vicente Roxas, a member of the UP Sigma Rho fraternity like CVC founders Antonio Carpio, now a Supreme Court justice, F. Arthur Villaraza and Simeon Marcelo.
Elamparo claimed that Roxas met with The Firm’s lawyers on the day the magistrate handed down a temporary restraining order against the Securities and Exchange Commission, which ordered Meralco not to continue with its election of officers and directors during a stockholders meeting last month.
Elamparo also claimed that Roxas allegedly managed to have the Meralco petition land in his sala after a “special raffle.”
“We were alarmed by these developments, and that prompted us to file a motion [asking Roxas] to inhibit himself,” Elamparo said, adding this was the reason fellow Justices Jose Jr. Sabio and Myrna Vidal complained about the transfer of the case from their division to Roxas’.
“As a general rule, the ponente [Roxas] of the TRO or of the case would bring the case with him wherever he goes. This was so because the CA had reorganization last July 4… but not if the case was already given due course or is already up for a decision for a preliminary injunction,” Elamparo said.
She said Sabio presided over the oral arguments on the Meralco case on June 23 and was deemed to have been given due course.
“On July 7, The Firm filed a motion for Sabio to step aside since Justice Bienvenido Reyes, chief of the Ninth Division, was back from his vacation leave. But Reyes had been back as early as June 16, a week before the oral arguments took place,” Elamparo said.
“What is anomalous here is that while Justice Roxas was claiming he had a claim to the case and Sabio and Vidal no longer had jurisdiction, he went back to Justice Vidal and asked her to sign the Roxas-drafted decision dismissing the case,” Elamparo said.
But The Firm said in a statement that it was Sabio who had undue interest in the case because he purportedly wanted to be promoted to the Supreme Court.
“Between now and the end of 2009, there will be six vacancies in the Supreme Court. Today, Justice Sabio is in contention for a promotion. He is currently the sixth most senior member of the Court of Appeals,” the law firm said in its statement.
“Justice Sabio is widely seen in the court as having an inside track for the promotion due to his connections and is actively jockeying for it. Other CA justices who attended the en banc meeting resent that he is projecting himself at their expense and at the expense of the court’s image with his recent actuations,” The Firm said.
The Firm claimed that Sabio himself had admitted that his brother Camilo Sabio, chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, called him up to convince him not to issue a temporary restraining order in favor of Meralco and openly admitted pressure from the government to favor GSIS.
“Yet, [Sabio] later uses the fact that he issued the TRO to cling on to the case. Does he intend to return the favor to the government by deciding the merits in favor of GSIS? Did he sign the TRO as a ruse to lull Meralco into complacency? Did he sign the TRO to provide himself an excuse to cling on to the case and use it as his ticket to the Supreme Court aware that he is merely a temporary chairman of the Special Ninth Division?” The Firm asked.
The Firm also questioned the acts of Presiding Justice Conrado Vasquez Jr. and suggested that he was favoring the GSIS because he had close relatives working for it.
“Instead of calming down the situation and protecting the image of the court by dealing with the affair as an internal matter to be resolved in accordance with the rules, CA Presiding Justice Vasquez adds fuel to the fire. He creates a media spectacle by calling a rare en banc meeting of the CA when all that the [rules of the court] provides is for him to report his actions to the CA en banc. Something that he could have easily done in writing,” The Firm said.
It criticized Vasquez for not disclosing that his daughter, Ma. Ruth Almira Vasquez, was connected with the GSIS corporate secretary, another daughter, Ma. Agnes Tosario Vasquez, was a dentist at the medical department, that his sister, Leonora de Jesus, was a former GSIS trustee, and that De Jesus’ daughter, Luisa Hernandez, was connected with the vice president for treasury.