Inconsistent, conflicting court decisions

Allow me to react to your May 26 editorial, “To rot in jail despite acquittal,” which highlighted the “inconsistency” of the antigraft court’s rulings on the P10 billion graft cases against Janet Lim-Napoles. It noted that in one of those cases involving Sen. Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., who was “accused of funneling P224 million from his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF or pork barrel) into Napoles’ nonexistent NGOs in exchange for kickbacks,” the first division of the Sandiganbayan recently acquitted Napoles following Revilla’s acquittal in 2021 by another Sandiganbayan division, that nonetheless ordered the senator to “pay back (P124.5 million)” allegedly pilfered from his PDAF.

The editorial mentioned another case which involved the pork barrel of former Davao del Sur congressman Douglas Cagas (now deceased) where another Sandiganbayan division found Napoles and her cohorts “guilty on two counts of graft and two counts of malversation for the misuse of the fund allocation” of the late congressman. Given the carceral terms imposed on them, including those already rendered in previous graft cases, Napoles and her cohorts will, indeed, most likely slum it out at the New Bilibid Prison till kingdom come.

Puzzling as the lower court’s incongruous dispositions might be, nothing could be more perplexing than the head-on clash in the decisions of the highest court of the land, no less.

Consider just two of the most egregiously “conflicting decisions” of late. In G.R. No. 233775, where a rich, old man who provided funds for his young inamorata to buy a house and lot, sued for the real estate’s return after their relationship went south. A division of the Supreme Court ruled that the funds being a “gift,” the act of giving should have complied with the strict formalities of a “deed of donation.” Lacking that made the gift “void.”

However, in G.R. No. 214016, where a foreigner gave money to his Filipino fiancée to buy a “conjugal home” for their use after their marriage, another Supreme Court division ruled that, despite welshing on her promise to marry her fiancé and dumping him altogether, “(the woman) cannot be compelled to return the P500,000 given to her”—because it was a “gift”! The formalities of a donation were nowhere mentioned to have been complied with in that case, and thus were seemingly deemed irrelevant. In other words, two Supreme Court rulings differed despite having basically the same circumstances: toxic in one case, copacetic or in excellent order in another.

The question has been raised in not a few other “conflicting decisions” from the Supreme Court’s three divisions that turn jurisprudence on its head: Why can’t the Supreme Court get its act together and set a good example to all lower courts? It has a whole army of eagle-eyed and highly paid researchers whose job it is to ensure that what has been “settled” does not get “unsettled” so needlessly.

Inconsistent rulings stick in the craw of any lawyer worth his salt. Worse, it corrodes public confidence in jurisprudence and the justice system in general. Yet, however jaw-dropping, eyebrow-lifting, or eyeball-rolling they may be, deviations have remained almost par for the course in any litigation.

The administration of justice should never be a guessing game. Law practitioners should not end up crossing their fingers after making their final arguments. But then again, is it really any wonder that a pleading is also called a “supplication” and a plea for relief a “prayer”—thus, a roll of the dice? So much for stare decisis, to stand by things decided, a governing principle former chief justice Fred Ruiz Castro had long etched on granite to give consistency and stability to the rule of law.

Steve L. Monsanto, lexsquare.firm@gmail.com