DUE to the inaction of government lawyers and failure to present evidence, the Sandiganbayan has dismissed Civil Case No. 0032 against former First Lady Imelda Marcos and her late husband, former strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos.
The anti-graft court’s Second Division held that the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) and the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) neglected their duty to either move to have the Marcos couple declared in default or to proceed with prosecuting the case for over 30 years.
This even if lawyers Gerard Contreras of the OSG and Rosaline Escobar-Landicho of the PCGG notified the court during a conference that the PCGG en banc has no objection to having the case declared closed and terminated considering that the government had already taken possession of properties sought to be recovered through a writ of execution.
In the 12-page resolution penned by Presiding Justice Geraldine Faith A. Econg, the court reminded the PCGG and the OSG that there were matters left unresolved in the case because the original complaint included claims for actual, moral, temperate, nominal and exemplary damages.
It criticized the government lawyers for disregarding procedural rules by leaving the cases hanging for over three decades.
“Even with partial satisfaction of the writ of execution, there remains an unresolved issue left for adjudication, and a concomitant duty of the plaintiff as a claiming party to prosecute the same. In the face of plaintiff’s failure to prosecute its action to an unreasonable length of time, this Court is constrained to dismiss the present complaint against defendant Imelda Marcos,” the Sandiganbayan said.
Associate Justices Edgardo M. Caldona and Arthur O. Malabaguio concurred.
Records show that the original complaint was filed on July 31, 1987 naming former government photographer Fernando Timbol and spouses Marcos as defendants.
The summons against all three defendants were returned unserved because the Marcos couple was living in Hawaii in exile while process servers failed to trace Timbol.
In 1988, on motions from the government, the court allowed the service of alias summons on the defendants. For the Marcos couple, copies of the summons and the complaint were handed to Marcos aide Col. Arturo Aruiza on November 10, 1988, while Timbol’s copy was served on him on April 25, 1988.
Timbol was declared in default for failing to file a responsive pleading and in a decision dated February 8, 1989, the Sandiganbayan ruled in favor of the Republic of the Philippines by declaring that motor vehicles and appliances listed by the PCGG were all “unlawfully acquired” hence forfeited in favor of the State.
This ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court in resolutions dated June 8 and June 20, 1989.
Supreme Court records showed 21 vehicles with a combined value of P5.1 million were recovered from Timbol’s possession even if he was supposed to have been paid only P6,300 as salary each year from 1972 to 1986.
In 1992, after her return to the country, the Marcos widow won a reprieve after the Sandiganbayan set aside the order of default against her, allowing her to contest the government allegations.
This was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1994 holding that Mrs. Marcos is entitled to be heard based on the “most elementary sense of fairness and liberality.”
Before the said SC ruling, the Sandiganbayan issued a resolution dated October 28, 1992 holding that Imelda Marcos did not file a responsive pleading addressing the allegations in the complaint.
The Sandiganbayan noted that the proper course of action for the government would have been to move that Mrs. Marcos be declared in default anew.
“Regardless of the passage of time, plaintiff’s duty to move for a default order is unchanged. Yet the plaintiff failed to do so and for all intents and purposes, left the present complaint pending without resolution,” the court said.
