Three justices of the Court of Appeals have been cleared of administrative case filed by a lawyer who accused them of impartiality.
In a 10-page decision, the Supreme Court dismissed for lack of legal and factual merit the complaint for impartiality filed by lawyer Mariano Pefianco against Associate Justices Maria Elisa Sempio Diy, Ramon Paul Hernando and Carmelita Salandanan-Manahan after they rejected outright his petition for review in a case in CA-Cebu station.
The SC ruled that bare allegations “will not suffice to sustain a claim of impartiality” and that “[t]he evidence of bias must be clear and convincing.”
The high tribunal stressed that it found nothing in the administrative complaint and in the records to sufficiently convince that the respondent-justices were impartial in issuing their assailed resolution dated Jan. 17, 2013.
The SC accepted the explanation of the CA justices who maintained that the outright dismissal was due to procedural infirmities and was warranted and supported by the Rules of Court and by jurisprudence.
Justice Hernando said that the complaint was baseless and vexatious and must be dismissed outright because the remedy for the complainant’s case is judicial, not administrative, in nature.
The SC instead turned the table on Pefianco and issued a show cause order against him.
It ordered the lawyer to justify why he should not be punished for indirect contempt of court “for his apparent tendency to file unsubstantiated administrative cases against judges and justices.”
The tribunal noted that Pefianco has earlier filed an administrative complaint against Justice Hernando which was also dismissed by the High Court.
“This is to emphasize that unfounded administrative charges against members of the bench degrade the judicial office and greatly interfere with the due performance of their functions in the Judiciary,” it stressed.
Also, the SC referred the case for investigation to the Office of the Bar Confidant to determine whether Pefianco has violated the terms and conditions of his suspension from the practice of law which this Court imposed upon him in a resolution dated August 12, 2012.
Pefianco was suspended for one year from the practice of law for violation of the Lawyer’s Oath and Code of Professional Responsibility.
In the present case, the High Court reiterated that “[u]nless his suspension has been lifted by this Court, the complainant remains to be suspended and is prohibited from engaging in the practice of law. We have held that the lifting of suspension from the practice of law is not automatic upon the end of the period stated in the decision; an order from the Court lifting the suspension is necessary to enable the suspended lawyer to resume his or her legal practice.”