High Court affirms authority over PAL cabin crew case

MANILA — The Supreme Court (SC) affirmed on Wednesday its jurisdiction over the labor case of some 1,423 cabin crew of the Philippine Airlines (PAL) who were terminated in the wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1998.
Voting 7-2, the High Court upheld the validity of its earlier resolution transferring jurisdiction from the Special Third Division to the Court en banc to decide on the merits over motions for reconsideration filed by PAL against its retrenched employees.
The affected employees are members of the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines (Fasap).
In a 30-page majority resolution penned by Associate Justice Arturo Brion, the Supreme Court en banc said the role of Chief Justice Renato Corona in the recall of the September 7, 2011 resolution of the SC was purely ministerial and only on the recommendation of the ruling division since he had inhibited himself from participation in the case since 2008.
“The confusion on this matter could have been brought about by the Chief Justice’s role as the Presiding Officer of the Court en banc, and the fact that the four most senior justices inhibited from participating in the case. In the absence of any clear personal malicious participation, it is neither correct nor proper to hold the Chief Justice personally accountable for the collegial ruling of the Court en banc,” the Court ruled.
Arguing for the recall, SC spokesperson Midas Marquez had said that the chamber misapplied rules after retiring justices handling the case passed it to a regular division from a special division.
Corona’s lawyers in his impeachment trial welcomed the decision of the SC on the matter.
“This goes to show that the Supreme Court is acting as a collegial body. If there’s someone to blame (for the alleged flip-flopping), it should not be the Chief Justice alone,” defense spokesperson Karen Jimeno told reporters.
Aside from Corona, the other justices who inhibited from the Fasap case were Associate Justices Antonio Carpio, Presbitero Velasco Jr. and Teresita Leonardo-de Castro.
The September 7 resolution, handed down by the SC’s Second Division, declared illegal the retrenchment of PAL employees.
It was ordered recalled after taking cognizance of the series of letters of PAL lawyer Estelito Mendoza, who pointed out a “misapplication of the rules,” citing Section 4(3), Article VIII of the Constitution.
The provision states, “(C)ases or matters heard by a division shall be decided or resolved with the concurrence of a majority of the Members who actually took part in the deliberations on the issues in the case and voted thereon, and in no case without the concurrence of at least three of such Members…”
This provision further stated that “(W)hen the required number is not obtained, the case shall be decided en banc: Provided, that no doctrine or principle of law laid down by the court in a decision rendered en banc or in division may be modified or reversed except by the court sitting en banc.”
The recall was denounced by Fasap members, who had accused the Supreme Court of flip-flopping, and Corona of participation in the case when he had previously inhibited because he used to settle the matter between the contending parties when he was still chief presidential legal counsel during the Arroyo administration.
Said flip-flopping in the court’s decision on this case became the basis of the House of Representatives in filing Article 3 of the impeachment complaint, which alleged that Corona committed culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust by failing to meet and observe the stringent standards under Article VIII, section 7 (3) of the Constitution that provides that “[a] member of the judiciary must be a person of proven competence, integrity, probity, and independence.”
The complaint further accused Corona of favoring PAL due to benefits he received from the company and his close ties with Mendoza, with Fasap president Roberto Anduiza even testifying at the impeachment court.
The majority decision, promulgated March 13, 2012 but was released by the Court en banc only Wednesday, further said the justices deemed it best that the matter be resolved by the Court en banc as it potentially involved questions of jurisdiction and interpretation of conflicting provisions of the Internal Rules of the SSC (IRSC).
Also, the SC said special and unusual circumstances attended the legal dispute, which are as follows:
– the confluence of the successive retirement of three justices (in a division of five justices) who actually participated in the assailed decision and resolution;
– the change in the governing rules from the administrative matters to the IRSC, which transpired during the pendency of the case;
– the occurrence of a series of inhibitions in the course of the case – Associate Justices Ruben Reyes (retired), de Castro, Corona, Velasco and Carpio – and the absences of Justices Maria Lourdes Sereno and Bienvenido Reyes at the critical time, requiring their replacement;
– the three reorganization of the divisions, which necessitated the transfer of the case from the Third Division, to the First Division, then to the Second Division;
– the unusual timing of Mendoza’s letters, made after the ruling division had issued the September 7 resolution, but before the parties received their copies of the said resolution;
– the time constraints that intervened, brought about by the parties’ receipt on September 19, 2011 of the special division’s resolution, and the consequent running of the period for finality, computed from date of promulgation, which would have lapsed to finality after October 4, 2011, had the September 7 resolution not been recalled.
“All these developments, in no small measure, contributed in their own peculiar way to the confusing situations that attended the September 7, 2011 resolution, resulting in the recall of this resolution by the Court en banc,” said the Court.
The September 7 resolution of the special division is recalled as the Court en banc has assumed jurisdiction to rule on the merits of the pending appeal filed by PAL. The appeal filed by Fasap questioning the recall of their victory in the labor case was also denied.
The case, the tribunal further said, should now be raffled either to Justice Lucas Bersamin or Justice Diosdado Peralta, the remaining members of the special division that originally ruled on the merits of the case, as member-in-charge in resolving the merits of these motions.
In her 52-page dissenting opinion, Sereno said the majority resolution “opened a Pandora’s box full of future troubles for Philippine judicial decision-making.”
Sereno said it opened for review a decision on the merits that had been unanimously agreed upon and affirmed by at least 10 justices sitting in three different divisions of the SC.
She said it also made possible error in the raffling of the case to a wrong “ponente” a jurisdictional defect as to render invalid that ponente’s decision and the concurrence by four other justices.
“Indeed, the recall of the September 7 resolution produced the very effect or perception that Justice Brion, speaking for the majority, wanted to avoid – flip-flopping on cases decided with finality on account of a prohibited second MR and personal correspondences by a party’s counsel. There can be no surer indication of flip-flopping than the subsequent and sudden denial of the petition in the main Fasap case on a second MR, despite the grant of the petition in three rulings by at least ten justices,” she said.
Concurring with Brion were Justices Peralta, Bersamin, Roberto Abad, Jose Perez, Jose Mendoza, Bienvenido Reyes. Justices Sereno and Estela Perlas-Bernabe dissented from the majority.
Justices Corona, Carpio, Velasco, De Castro, Martin Villarama and Mariano del Castillo, who is on medical leave, took no part. (JCV/Virgil Lopez/Sunnex)
http://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/local-news/2012/03/21/high-court-affirms-authority-over-pal-cabin-crew-case-212465

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