We do not find the respondents’ submission meritorious. While the 1998 resolution is an interlocutory order, as correctly argued by the petitioner and impliedly conceded by the respondents, the claim that the 1998 resolution should have been immediately questioned by the petitioner on certiorari is not totally correct as a petition for certiorari is not grounded solely on the issuance of a disputed interlocutory ruling.[58] For a petition for certiorari to prosper, Section 1, Rule 65 of the Rules of Court requires, among others, that neither an appeal nor any plain, speedy and adequateremedy in the ordinary course of law is available to the aggrieved party. As a matter of exception, the writ of certiorari may issue notwithstanding the existence of an available alternative remedy, if such remedy is inadequate or insufficient in relieving the aggrieved party of the injurious effects of the order complained of.[59]
We note that at the time of its 1st motion in Civil Case No. 0009, the petitioner had not yet concluded the presentation of its evidence, much less made any formal offer of evidence. At this stage of the case, the prematurity of using the extraordinary remedy ofcertiorari to question the admission of the Bane deposition is obvious. After the denial of the 1st motion, the plain remedy available to the petitioner was to move for a reconsideration to assert and even clarify its position on the admission of the Bane deposition. The petitioner could introduce[60] anew the Bane deposition and include this as evidence in its formal offer[61] – as the petitioner presumably did in Civil Case No. 0130.
Thus, at that point, the case was not yet ripe for the filing of a petition forcertiorari, and the denial of the 1st motion could not have been the reckoning point for the period of filing such a petition.
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