THE Court of Appeals junked on Sept. 22 a petition of First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo to dismiss a damage suit filed by journalists against him over the string of libel suits he had lodged against the media.
In a 24-page decision, the court said Arroyo’s complaint that Makati Judge Zenaida Galapate-Laguilles acted without jurisdiction and with grave abuse when she admitted the amended complaint despite the journalists’ failure to pay the correct docket fees lacked merit.
The CA said the journalists showed no bad faith when they paid the fees based on the assessment made by the clerk of court. Neither did the journalists have any intent of evading payment of the correct fees, it added.
The court also said nonpayment of the proper docket fees does not automatically mean the dismissal of the case as long as the fee is paid within the prescriptive period.
The appellate court also said Arroyo’s complaint that the journalists’ petition was not a class suit was “premature” as the issue was supposed to be tackled in the preliminary hearing by the Makati court. (Download the Court of Appeals decision)
Lawyer Harry Roque, counsel for the journalists, called the dismissal of Arroyo’s petition “the beginning of the end of impunity.”
“Those who will use libel laws to infringe on freedom of the press, beware. Democracy fought back and won,” he said in a statement.
More than 40 journalists sued Arroyo before the Makati court in December 2006, saying the string of libel cases filed by the First Gentleman violated the constitutional right to free press.
On March 16, 2007, Judge Galapate-Laguilles admitted the amended complaint which, the journalists said, was filed to, among other reasons, “make the words of the complaint conform squarely with the intention of the plaintiff to claim damages for the Philippines as a unified institution.”–Yvonne T. Chua
(VERA Files trustees Ellen Tordesillas, Chit Estella, Booma Cruz and Yvonne Chua were among the journalists who filed the class suit against Arroyo.)