‘Justice so-and-so will issue a TRO’

published 5 Jan 2009, MST

Blurb: Such claims undermine the judiciary's drive to purge the Court of Appeals of corrupt magistrates.

It's business as usual for the commercial tenants of 4M Square building,a four-storey edifice sitting right along busy Quirino Hi-Way in Barangay Greater Lagro, Novaliches. There is a dental clinic, branch of a commercial bank, a clothes shop, food stalls, a security agency, a realty company, a manpower and consultancy office, among others. The owners of the building, family members comprising Four M Square Corporation, have advised the tenants they are now in charge, and that it is their priority that these individual businesses are insulated, as much as possible, from the legal battle they are currently fighting.

It should have been a legal victory already, given that on December 15, 2008, Branch 100 of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Court issued a Writ of Execution for Four M Square Corporation to take possession of the building. The writ gave one Mario San Andres three days to vacate the building and remit over P28 million in unlawfully collected rental payments he had been getting from tenants since August 2003.

Two years earlier, or on December 15, 2006, Branch 33 of the Metropolitan Trial Court of Quezon City declared Four Square Corporation as the rightful owner of the building. San Andres' motion for reconsideration was subsequently denied.

What is sad is that San Andres is a son-in-law of the family patriarch (the other officers of the building are his sisters-in-law) who helped him learn the rudiments of entrepreneurship and expanded his network. But that's really another story – a human interest piece on ingratitude and the depths one can sink into because of greed.

Now San Andres seems to have decided to adopt a new tack in asserting his claim on the building – and the rental payments. He is now on extended vacation, but his building administrator who goes by the name of Lea Roxas now allegedly tells the tenants San Andres would soon be back – with a temporary restraining order that would block Four M officers from taking over the building. And since the tenants have been dealing with the San Andres team for the longest time, why deal with their adversaries now?

But what is most appalling is that Roxas reportedly says her boss is a “close ally” of Court of Appeals Justice Normandie Pizarro, who would eventually end up handling the case and then issuing said restraining order. Just how confidently somebody can make this claim – and with a straight face – should bother anybody remotely concerned with the country's justice system.

Four M Square officers do agree that the justice is linked a little too closely with their prodigal in-law. Pizarro and San Andres go a long way, they claim, into the days when the former was still a trial court judge in Quezon City. When he was appointed to to the appellate court, Pizarro dismissed a perjury case filed by a brother-in-law against San Andres. This case is presently pending consideration by the said court.

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Actually, the petition for temporary restraining order Roxas reportedly brags about is still nonexistent. The family thinks San Andres' lawyers have been working on it during the holidays and would file it this month.

But the fact that nothing has yet been filed should heighten one’s incredulity at how Roxas, speaking on behalf of her boss, can make such claims. From where comes her certainty that the case would get assigned to the justice she names? That the petition would be ruled on this way or that?

This early, Justice Pizarro should dissociate himself from these individuals who may be advancing their interests by mere threats and name-dropping. By all means, let the prayer for TRO be filed. But let it be evaluated on its merits alone.
Judges and justices are subject to higher ethical standards than the average citizen is. They should not only be beyond irregularity; they should be beyond the perception
of such. Pizarro must know that his association with San Andres does not help his image at all.

Nor does it help dispel the notion that some justices of the Court of Appeals are corrupt, or at least corruptible. Finally, it only validates the public view that previous efforts to purge the court of dishonest elements are inadequate and half-baked.