A.C. No. 1536 - ROSENDO HOMERES, COMPLAINANT, VS. QUIRINO ORIEL.DECISION - Supreme Court E-Library

Ruling

Accordingly, complainant would confide in him, as in this case where complainant had problems collecting the remaining balance for the jeep he sold to Abuda. The witness said that all demand letters of complainant remained unheeded. Figaroa further testified that during the presentation of evidence of Abuda, respondent was absent and could not be located despite his efforts to look for him; that when he inquired from respondent about the lower courts decision, respondent refused to show him a copy thereof and instead presented the Motion for Reconsideration he was drafting for complainant. The Motion was filed one day outside the reglementary period. The records of the case show that the hearings of the case for the years 1976 to 1981 before Solicitor Cusi failed to take place due to motions of either the complainant or the respondent. The case moved again in 1992 when the Commission on Bar Discipline of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), thru the late Commissioner Plaridel C. Jose, ordered the parties [18] to attend the April 28, 1992 hearing at the IBP Building, Doña Julia Vargas Avenue, Pasig, Metro Manila. In a letter [19] dated March 24, 1992, Corazon R. Homeres, daughter-in-law of complainant, informed Commissioner Jose that complainant had died of arteriosclerotic heart disease on December 12, 1977 as shown in his Death Certificate. [20] She requested that the hearings of the case be transferred to Tacloban City due to financial constraints, considering that she did not have a job and had no means to defray her transportation expenses. Commissioner Jose issued an Order dated April 28, 1992 [21] requiring respondent to comment on the said request. It took another seven (7) years before the case was scheduled for hearing. In a Notice [22] dated September 30, 1999, Investigator Corazon Evangelista-Valencia ordered the parties to appear at the October 29, 1999 hearing at the IBP Building, Capitol Complex, Cebu City. Respondent appeared but there was no representative on the part of complainant despite due notice to his counsel and daughter-in-law. Due to their non-appearance, the hearing was set for the last time on December 10, 1999. Complainants daughter-in-law in her letter to the IBP-Visayas Regional Discipline Committee explained that much as they would want to pursue the case at bar, [they] deem it not to go on anymore as they were hard up in paying for lawyers fees and transportation expenses; and, that given the death of her father-in-law, they just deemed it wise to have peace of mind and live free of tensions, worries and anxieties. [23] Nonetheless, complainants daughter-in-law manifested, viz .: Yet, with all aforementioned reasons it does not mean that we consent Atty. Quirino Oriels misconduct/mismanagement on the case x x x nor [do] we prevent your good office from disciplining its members of the IBP. Moreover, it does not mean we tolerate such behavior [that] need[s] to be disciplined and not go [scot-free]. x