SC didn’t flip-flop

The recent decision of the Supreme Court to “recall” the Sept. 7 resolution of its Second Division dismissing a second motion for reconsideration of the Philippine Airlines (PAL) because of a “procedural lapse” or “procedural mix-up” does not show that it “flip-flopped.”

It only shows that the Supreme Court, as it humbly admitted in the past, is “not infallible.” It is not perfect. Just like any one of us, it can commit a mistake or an error in law or in procedure. In a case, “the Supreme Court has acknowledged that it is not infallible and that, if upon examination an error in judgment is perceived, the Court is not obliged to blindly adhere to such decision (and) in this jurisdiction, rectification of an error, more than anything else, is paramount.” (Firestone Ceramics v. CA, GR 127022, June 28, 2000)

Instead of condemning the Supreme Court for its “recall” decision, we should be glad that this Court knows how to accept a mistake and makes a public disclosure immediately upon its discovery and tries its best to rectify whatever error it has committed.

While I sympathize with the more than 5,000 employees retrenched by PAL on July 15, 1998 who already won in the July 22, 2008 decision of the Court’s Third Division, which was affirmed with slight modification by the Court’s “Special Third Division” on Oct. 2, 2009, I am very, very sure that the Supreme Court en banc, which will now decide the Second Motion for Reconsideration of PAL, will resolve the case with immediate dispatch. The Court cannot just ignore such a procedural lapse or mix-up because it will affect proceedings in future cases that might be placed in the same predicament. The better rule is to correct the error now to serve as a guide for future litigants, and their lawyers and the courts.

After all, as 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope put it: “To err is human and to forgive divine” and that “A man should never be ashamed to own that he is wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.”

—ROMULO B. MACALINTAL,

Philamlife Village, Las Piñas City