G.R. No. 187640 - PHILIPPINE NATIONAL BANK, VS. THE SPS. ANGELITO PEREZ AND JOCELYN PEREZ.[G.R. NO. 187687] SPS. ANGELITO PEREZ AND JOCELYN PEREZ, VS. PHILIPPINE NATIONAL BANK.D E C I S I O N - Supreme Court E-Library

Ruling

accordingly, dismissed the case. Spouses Perez then filed a Motion for Reconsideration which was subsequently denied. They also filed a Second Motion for Reconsideration dated January 16, 2003 which was also denied by the trial court. After this, Spouses Perez filed a Notice of Appeal. It was also denied by the trial court in an Order dated April 11, 2003 for being filed out of time. Spouses Perez then filed a Motion for Reconsideration dated April 29, 2003 seeking the reconsideration of the Order dismissing the appeal. The Motion for Reconsideration dated April 29, 2003 was originally set for hearing on July 30, 2003. However, Spouses Perez filed five (5) motions to postpone the hearing. The trial court granted the first four (4) motions but denied the fifth one. Spouses Perez filed a Motion for Reconsideration of the Order denying the fifth Motion for Postponement which was also subsequently denied. Consequently, Spouses Perez appealed the denial of their Motion for Reconsideration to the CA. The petition was docketed as CA-G.R. SP No. 85491. On January 25, 2005, the CA rendered a Decision denying the petition filed by Spouses Perez. It reasoned: Neither did respondent court gravely abuse its discretion in resolving to dismiss Civil Case No. 20-1155 for failure of the plaintiffs and their time, allegedly because their counsel had to attend a pre-trial hearing in another case. True is it that procedural rules may be relaxed to relieve a litigant of an injustice not commensurate with the degree of his noncompliance with the procedure required. But equally true is it that the law mandates that the appearance of parties at the pre-trial conference is mandatory. Here, as borne out by the records of this case, counsel for petitioners received the notice of pre-trial conference in another case a long while before they were notified of the pre-trial conference in the case at bench. As shown in the notice dated August 15, 2002, counsel already knew that the pre-trial conference in the present case was set for September 19, 2002. By the time he received the notice of pre-trial hearing in the case at bench on August 22, 2002, counsel thus must have seen and realized the obvious conflict in schedules between the two cases. However, instead of taking timely measures to prevent an impending snafu, it took counsel more than a week to file a motion for postponement of the pre-trial conference in Civil Case No. 20-1155. Worse, although received by respondent court on September 3, 2002, that motion did not contain any request that said motion be scheduled for hearing. Equally distressing, it is not clearly shown that the requirement on notice to the other party was likewise complied with. Counsel evidently failed to take into account the fact that, just like him, the court must need also to calendar its own cases. Further, as stressed by respondent court in its challenged order of September 19, 2002, petitioners' counsel works for a law firm staffed by several l