“X
x x.
Relative
to Special Proceedings No. 3946 involving a petition for correction of entry in the birth
record of her grandson, respondent claims that she was not disqualified under Section
1, Rule 137 of the Rules of Court from taking cognizance of and deciding said
case ratiocinating that: (a) she,
her daughter, son-in-law and grandson do not have pecuniary interest in the
case; (b) the case was not controversial in nature and; (c) with respect to
respondent’s dispensing with the requirement of publication of the petition
which have cost P4,000.00
to P6,000.00, the amount
was “unnecessary expense on the part of the petitioner that will not inure to
the benefit of the government, anyway.”[15]
Respondent
conduct is inexcusable.
Section
1, Rule 137 of the Rules of Court provides:
SECTION 1. Disqualification
of judges. – No judge or judicial officer shall sit in any case in which
he, or his wife or child, is pecuniary interested as heir, legatee, creditor or
otherwise, or in which he is related to either party within the sixth degree of
consanguinity or affinity, or to counsel within the fourth degree, computed
according to the rules of the civil law, or in which he has been executor,
administrator, guardian, trustee or counsel, or which he has presided in any
inferior court when his ruling or decision is the subject of review, without
the written consent of all parties in interest, signed by them and entered upon
the record.
A judge may, in the exercise of his sound discretion, disqualify
himself from sitting in a case, for just or valid reasons other than those
mentioned above.
Respondent
is clearly disqualified from trying the case under the aforequoted section and
also under Rule 3.12 (d), Canon 3 of the Code of Judicial Conduct.[16] Being related within the sixth degree
of consanguinity to one of the parties (petitioner) in Special Proceedings No.
9346, it was mandatory for respondent to have inhibited herself from hearing
the case. While respondent
or her daughter may not have pecuniary interest in the case as heir, legatee,
creditor or otherwise, which is her contention for her exculpation, what is
violated in Section 1 of Rule 137 was her taking cognizance of the case despite
her relationship to a party within the sixth degree of consanguinity or
affinity.
Apart
from the rules already cited, respondent violated Rule 2.03, Canon 2 of Code of
Judicial Conduct which states that: “A
judge shall not allow family, social or other relationships to influence
judicial conduct or judgment. The
prestige of judicial office shall not be used or lent to advance the private
interests of others, nor convey or permit others to convey the impression that
they are in a special position to influence the judge.”
In Garcia v. De la Peña,[17] we expounded on the rationale behind
the rule on compulsory disqualification of judges in this wise:
The rule on compulsory disqualification of a judge to hear a case
where, as in the instant case, the respondent judge is related to either party
within the sixth degree of consanguinity or affinity rests on the salutary
principle that no judge should preside in a case in which he is not wholly
free, disinterested, impartial and independent. A judge has both the duty of rendering
a just decision and the duty of doing it in a manner completely free from
suspicion as to its fairness and as to his integrity. The law conclusively presumes that a
judge cannot objectively or impartially sit in such a case and, for that
reason, prohibits him and strikes at his authority to hear and decide it, in the
absence of written consent of all parties concerned. The purpose is to preserve the
people’s faith and confidence in the courts of justice.
Respondent
contends that the petition for correction of entry of the birth record of her
grandson does not involve controversial matters such as those relating to civil
status, citizenship or nationality, but merely pertain to innocuous or clerical
errors and, therefore, the correction can be done through summary proceedings
under Article 412 of the Civil Code[18] in relation to Rule 108 of the Rules
of Court.
Even
on the assumption that the petition for correction of entry of respondent’s
grandson is not controversial in nature, this does not detract from the fact
that she cannot be free from bias or partiality in resolving the case by reason
of her close blood relationship to him. In
fact, bias was clearly demonstrated when she waived the requirement of
publication of the petition on the dubious ground of enabling the parents of the minor (her daughter
and son-in-law) to save the publication fee as they were then just “starting to
have a family.”
In
any case, notice and publication of the hearing of the petition under Rule 108
of the Rules of Court is mandatory and cannot be waived, particularly Sections
3,4 and 5 thereof:
SEC. 3. Parties. – When cancellation or correction of
entry in the civil register is sought, the civil registrar and all persons who
have or claimed any interest which would be affected thereby shall be made
parties to the proceeding.
SEC. 4. Notice
and publication. – Upon the
filing of the petition, the court shall, by an order, fix the time and place of
the hearing of the same, and cause reasonable notice thereof to be given to the
person named in the petition. The
court shall also cause the order to be published once a week for three (3)
consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the province.
SEC. 5. Opposition. – The civil registrar and any person
having or claiming any interest under the entry whose cancellation or correction is sought may, within
fifteen (15) days from notice of the petition, or from the last date of
publication of such notice, file his opposition thereto.
Even if the proceedings contemplated in Rule 108 are not
controversial in nature, they are still adversarial, hence, the need of notice
and publication of the hearing. As
the Court in Republic v.
Valencia[19] elucidated:
The court’s role in hearing the petition to correct certain
entries in the Civil Registry is to ascertain the truth about the facts
recorded therein. Under our
system of administering justice, truth is best ascertained or approximated by
trial conducted under the adversary system.
Being
properly an adversary proceeding, respondent’s flawed logic that her
relationship to the petitioner does not disqualify her from deciding the case
because there are no opposing parties is untenable.
Respondent
has neither the authority nor the discretion to dispense with the publication
of the notice of hearing of the petition as provided in the aforequoted Section
4, Rule 108 of the Rules of Court. Respondent
knows or ought to know that said requisite is mandatory, without which the
court acquires no jurisdiction over the case. How the case was raffled to the sala
of respondent in the Regional Trial Court of Pasay City when the petition
should have been filed in the Regional Trial Court of Manila, where the civil
registry involved is located is baffling enough. But for the respondent to waive with
the required publication to enable the parents of the minor “who are just
starting to have a family” to save the publication fee does not speak well of
respondent’s grasp of the law. We
agree with Justice Valdez in his observation that:
The relationship could account for the alacrity of Judge xxx in
favorably acting on the petition although the civil registrar was not impleaded
who, in this case, should have been the Civil Registrar of Manila since the
minor xxx, whose birth certificate was sought to be corrected, was born and
registered in Manila, and although the petition was erroneously filed with her
court as it should have filed with the Regional Trial Court of Manila, pursuant
to Section 1 of Rule 108 which directs that such a petition shall be filed
“with the Court of First Instance (now RTC) of the province where the
corresponding civil registry is located.” The relationship furthermore led her
to dispense with the publication requirement, which is jurisdictional, just to
enable the parents of the minor (her daughter and son-in-law), “who are just
starting to have a family” to save the publication fee of P4,000.00 to P6,000.00. Any of these flaws should have,
instead, caused the outright dismissal of the petition.
“The necessary consequence of the failure to implead the civil
registrar as an indispensable party and to give notice by publication of the
petition for correction of entry was to render the proceeding of the trial
court, so far as the correction of entry was concerned, null and void for lack
of jurisdiction both as to party and as to subject matter.”[20]
The
Court, once again, earnestly reminds judges to be extra prudent and circumspect
in the performance of their duties for “(a) judge owes it to the public and to
the legal profession to know the factual basis of the complaint and the very
law he is supposed to apply to a given controversy. He is called upon to exhibit more than
cursory acquaintance with the statutes and procedural rules. Party litigants will have greater
faith in the administration of justice if judges are not cursorily excused of
apparent deficiency in the analysis of the facts of the case and in the grasp
of the legal principles. For
service in the judiciary means a continuous study and research on the law from
beginning to end (Roa vs. Imbing, 231 SCRA 58 [1984]; Wingarts vs. Mejia, 242 SCRA
436 [1995]). A member of
the bench must continuously keep himself abreast of legal and jurisprudential
developments because the learning process in law never ceases.”[21]
X x x.”
