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First, oral testimony is not as reliable as documentary evidence.[17] Second, PNB’s own witness, San Diego, testified that in the verification process, the principal duty to determine the genuineness of the signature devolved upon the account analyst.[18] However, PNB did not present the account analyst to explain his or her failure to sign the box for signature and balance verification of the subject applications for manager’s check, thus, casting doubt as to whether he or she did indeed verify the signatures thereon. Third, we cannot fault the appellate court for not giving weight to the testimonies of Gallego and San Diego considering that the latter are naturally interested in exculpating themselves from any liability arising from the failure to detect the forgeries in the subject transactions. Fourth, Gallego admitted that PNB’s employees received training on detecting forgeries from the National Bureau of Investigation.[19] However, Emmanuel Guzman, then NBI senior document examiner, testified, as an expert witness, that the forged signatures in the subject applications for manager’s check contained noticeable and significant differences from the genuine signatures of FFCCI’s authorized signatories and that the forgeries should have been detected or observed by a trained signature verifier of any bank.[20]
