A.C. No. 14000 [Formerly CBD Case No. 22-6705] - NANETTE S. TUAZON, VS. ATTY. DARYL DELA* CRUZ.D E C I S I O N - Supreme Court E-Library

Ruling

Accordingly, for his misappropriation of and failure to account for the PHP 200,000.00 entrusted to him by petitioner, respondent must be penalized for the serious offense of misappropriating a client's funds [50] and the less serious offense of unjustifiable failure to render accounting of the client's funds . [51] Appositely, Canon VI, Section 40 of the CPRA finds application. The penalty for multiple offenses arising from a single act or omission provides that while a respondent shall still be found liable for all such offenses, he will only be meted the penalty for the most serious offense. Upon this point, the Court ruled in Judge Banzuela-Didulo v. Santizo [52] that the charges against therein respondent were based on the totality of her actions, which could not be reasonably separated from one another. Analogously, in this case, the negligence attributed to respondent in handling spouses Tuazon's case is directly linked to his misappropriation of her money and his unjustified refusal to provide an accounting of those funds intended for spouses Tuazon's bail bond. Alternatively stated, respondent's misappropriation and failure to account for the client's money are inseparable from his subsequent failure to post spouses Tuazon's bail bond, which ultimately jeopardized their case. On this score, the most serious offense in this case is the misappropriation of a client's funds found under Canon VI, Section 33(g). In the comparable case of Celaje v. Atty. Soriano , [53] therein respondent lawyer Atty. Santiago Soriano (Atty. Soriano) misappropriated the amount of PHP 5,800.00 of his client's funds by misrepresenting that an injunction bond must be paid. Atty. Soriano was correspondingly penalized with a two-year suspension as the Court ratiocinated that misappropriation is "a gross violation of general morality and of professional ethics[,] and impairs public confidence in the legal profession which deserves punishment." [54] The instant case presents more egregious circumstances than in Celaje . For one , the amount misappropriated by respondent is substantially greater, and his misconduct is exacerbated by additional violations of the CPRA. Moreover, unlike the unnecessary bond in Celaje , as the related writ was already denied in that case, the bail bond in the case at bench was essential to protect the liberty of spouses Tuazon. Respondent's resolve to disregard this urgent necessity and to repeatedly lie to his client intensifies the severity of his offense. Collectively, these circumstances justify the imposition of a harsher penalty than the two-year suspension imposed in Celaje . Thusly, respondent is suspended from the practice of law for a period of three years. In addition to the foregoing, respondent is also liable for another count of the less serious offense of simple negligence for his violation of Canon III, Section 50 of the CPRA regarding the directive to lawyers to keep separate their client's funds from their own and those o