It is not rare to find a situation in the Philippines where a retiring judge leaves the judicial service without acting on his pending cases. This is detrimental to the rule of law and the administration of justice in the country. Regular judicial audits conducted by Supreme Court auditors have exposed this unfortunate situation.
In the recent case of RE: JUDICIAL AUDIT CONDUCTED IN THE REGIONAL TRIAL COURT, BRANCH 6, TACLOBAN CITY, EN BANC, A.M. No. RTJ-09-2171 (Formerly A.M. No. 09-94-RTC), March 17, 2009, the Supreme Court found retired JUDGE SANTOS T. GIL GUILTY of gross inefficiency for his undue delay in rendering decisions or orders and was FINED in the amount of Fifty Thousand Pesos (P50,000.00), to be deducted from his retirement benefits.
A judicial audit was conducted in the Regional Trial Court (RTC), Branch 6, of Tacloban City on November 28 and 29, 2008. Judge Santos T. Gil was Presiding Judge of the court until his retirement on August 20, 2008.
In its Report dated February 9, 2009, the Office of the Court Administrator (OCA) found that prior to his retirement, Judge Gil —
1. Failed to take action on sixteen (16) criminal cases;
3. Failed to resolve the pending incidents/motions in four (4) criminal cases;
4. Failed to decide thirty-four (34) criminal cases;
5. Failed to promulgate the decision in five (5) criminal cases.
The Office of the Court Administrator (OCA) disclosed that the audit team had discovered that:
1. several warrants of arrest were in the possession of the Process Server and were not properly indorsed to the concerned police officers;
2. some certificates of detention were signed by Atty. Edna V. Maceda, Branch Clerk of Court;
3. there were no orders directing the payment of postponement fees in civil cases;
4. some motions were not properly received (without stamp of the date of receipt);
5. Pre-Trial Orders (PTOs) were signed only by the judge;
5. records of cases jointly tried were incomplete;
6. there were typographical errors found in several orders;
7. the January to June Semestral Docket Inventory for 2008 manifested wrong case numbers;
8. the case records were not paginated; and
9. there were also firearms, ammunition and illegal drugs, and evidence in decided criminal cases that were still in the possession of the court.
Judge Gil was given previously 120 days prior to his retirement to decide and resolve the cases submitted for decision, during which period, he was directed to desist from hearing cases. Despite the ample time given, he failed to decide all cases submitted for decision. In fact, upon his retirement, he left unresolved thirty-four (34) criminal cases and four (4) civil cases submitted for decision. Apart from this, Judge Gil also failed to take appropriate action for a considerable length of time in a total of ninety-two (92) criminal cases and seven (7) civil cases; resolve pending motions in nine (9) cases; and promulgate five (5) decisions.
Glaringly, two of the pending criminal cases (Criminal Cases Nos. 93-01-38 and 93-01-39) were submitted for decision way back in 2002 while one civil case (Civil Case No. 92-02-36) was deemed submitted for decision in 1999. In other words, these two criminal cases have been pending resolution for six years, and the civil case for seven years, at the time Judge Gil retired from the service. When viewed in light of the constitutional prescription that lower courts were given only a period of 90 days within which to decide or resolve a case from the time it was submitted for decision, this delay clearly illustrated the gravity of Judge Gil’s incompetence, according to the Supreme Court.
The Court added that a judge must manage his court with a view to the prompt and convenient disposition of its business. Although the Court, in its pursuit of speedy dispensation of justice, was not unmindful of circumstances that may delay the disposition of the cases assigned to judges and its sympathetic to seasonably filed requests for extensions of time to decide cases, however, verification with the Docket Division of the OCA disclosed no such requests for extension of time to decide the cases submitted for decision or any pending motions in the reported cases.
The Court emphasized that failure to decide cases within the reglementary period, without strong and justifiable reason, constituted gross inefficiency warranting the imposition of an administrative sanction on the defaulting judge. The penalty imposed varied in each case; from fine, suspension, suspension and fine, and even dismissal, depending chiefly on the number of cases left undecided within the reglementary period, and other factors, such as the damage suffered by the parties as a result of the delay, the health and age of the judge. In view of Judge Gil’s retirement on August 20, 2008, the only penalty that the Court could impose against him was a fine.
The Court stated that Judge Gil’s actuations indicated an indifference to the plight of litigants and a blatant disregard of their right to speedy disposition of their cases. Hence, the Court determined that the penalty of P50,000.00 was commensurate to his infractions particularly because it was not the first time that Judge Gil had been sanctioned by the Court for undue delay in resolving cases. Judge Gil had been previously fined P5,000.00 for undue delay in resolving a land registration case. In another case, Judge Gil was also fined P2,000.00 for not complying promptly with an order of this Court to conduct an investigation on an administrative complaint against a lawyer. In both cases, the Court sternly warned Judge Gil that repetition of the same or similar offense would be dealt with more severely.
