Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Compulsory disqualification of judges

Villaluz v. Mijares, En Banc, A.M. No. RTJ-98-1402  April 3, 1998


“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.”