Restaurateurs ask Court to reconsider decision

Two prominent Virac restaurant owners have filed a motion for reconsideration with the Municipal Trial Court following its Sept. 26 decision dropping the twin falsification raps they filed against Gov. Hector S. Sanchez.

In their motion filed last Monday, Sandy's Blossom restaurant owner Veronica Co and Chicken House disco and restaurant operator Judy Ang-Golepang, thru counsel Loreto S. Ponti, argued that the proceedings had "been tainted with irregularity, thereby depriving the private complainants of their Constitutional right to due process."

They argued further that "the Order (to dismiss) has been issued as a result of erroneous appreciation of the law and its facts." In support of the first contention, Golepang and Co said that they have never received any Notice of Hearing.

"Records indubitably show that the ex-parte motion is a litigated motion and therefore, a notice stating the time and place of hearing directed to the parties concerned, is required by the Rules," counsel Ponti said. "Without such notice, the motion is but a mere scrap of paper: it presents no question, which merits the attention and consideration of the Court. The Clerk has even no right to receive it."

Ponti said that the twin elements of notice and hearing which constitute elements of due process are absent in the case at bench, with the irregularity in the proceedings resulting in injustice to the prejudice of the complainants, who as a consequence were deprived of their Constitutional rights.

With regard to the Court's dismissal of the case based on Sec. 5, Rule II of Administrative Order No. 7, Ponti said the application of the law is erroneous. The section refers only to the filing of information of cases falling under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Ombudsman cognizable by the Municipal Trial Courts and not to preliminary investigation of crimes cognizable by the Regional Trial Court.

"The crimes for falsification of public documents... were filed with the Honorable Court not for trial but for preliminary investigation pursuant to Sections 1, 2 and 3 of Rule 112 of the Revised Rules of Court and Section 3 and 4 of AO No. 7," the motion said.

"With the enactment of RA 6770, otherwise known as the Ombudsman Act of 1989, the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman to investigate cases involving public officials is no longer exclusive but only primary," it added.