Some contemporary events have a way of triggering recollections of past events of a similar nature or character. A case in point is the recent computer-system glitch at one of this country’s largest commercial banks, Bank of the Philippine Islands.
The glitch brought about a scrambling of account names and balances of deposit accounts, among other things. Some accounts ended up larger—in some cases much larger—and others ended up smaller or wiped out completely. One depositor woke up the following day with a deposit account magnified by as much as P2 billion (yes, billion).
The erroneous magnification of some BPI deposit accounts brought back to my mind the celebrated 1970s case involving the representative office in the Philippines of the American banking giant Mellon Bank. The case involved Mellon Bank deposit funds remitted from the US to a couple in this country surnamed Javier. The amount remitted to the Javiers was $1,000—equivalent to around P7,000 at the then-prevailing exchange rate—and the remitter was Mrs. Javier’s sister.
The transaction should have been routine. It should have been just another one of the tens of US$-to-Philippines remittances effected daily by American to Philippine recipients. Unfortunately, something went amiss: When the Javier couple went to Mellon Bank’s Makati office to get their money, they found, to their enormous surprise, P7 million—the approximate equivalent of $1,000,000—awaiting them. A Mellon Bank clerk in the US had added three O’s to the to-be-remitted amount.
Once it was informed by its US head office that an error had been made, Mellon Bank-Makati was too late. The Javier couple had withdrawn the entire peso equivalent of $1,000,000. Pandemonium broke loose.
The Philippine lawyers of Mellon Bank immediately tread to contact the Javier couple but were unsuccessful. The couple suddenly was nowhere to be found. But they had engaged the services of a prominent law firm closely identified with President Ferdinand Marcos. In its initial discussion with the Javiers’ lawyers the Mellon Bank lawyers learned that the position of the Javiers’ lawyers was that, they being the designated recipients of the remittance, the Javiers rightfully owned the $1,000,000.
The source of the remitted funds—the sister of Mrs. Javier—was shocked to learn that her sister and brother-in-law had insisted that she had sent them $1,000,000 and had withdrawn the entire amount. She executed a document that her intention was to send her sister and brother-in-law $1,000, not $1,000,000, and she tried to communicate with them. But it was all too late. The money was gone, and so was the couple.
The principals of the two law firms tried to work things out, but the Javiers’ lawyers were adamant. The $1,000,000 had clearly been remitted by Mellon Bank to the Javiers and so the money belonged to them.
The possibility of an amicable settlement having been fully explored, Mellon Bank went to court. It fully expected that, on the basis of the attendant facts, the court would consider the case open-and-shut affair. But, to the extreme shock and consternation of Mellon Bank, its Philippine lawyers and Ms. Javier’s sister, His Honor ruled in favor of the Javier couple.
Naturally, Mellon Bank appealed the ruling and eventually obtained a reversal of the lower-court decision. But damage had already been done to the image of the Philippine judiciary both here and abroad.
The whereabouts of the Javier couple were never traced. They just vanished with their loot. Their lawyers claimed to high heaven that they did not know where the Javiers had gone. The mystery-thriller aficionados theorized that the husband and wife had undergone cosmetic surgery.
Thus ended a very sad episode in the history of the Philippine judiciary and the Philippine legal profession.
Back to the contemporary events and the BPI computer-system glitch. None of the beneficiaries of the glitch—those whose deposit accounts ballooned overnight—made a move to cash in on their accidental good fortune. The lady whose deposit account grew by P2 billion was quoted as saying that she didn’t dream of touching the money.
How unlike the Javier couple.
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