Delayed SC rulings, notices are not surprising

MY STEPMOTHER practices law. I assist her with research, computer stuff, filing and sorting out court mails. Recently, we received a notice of resolution from the Supreme Court dated September 2015 but it was mailed only in January 2016 as shown by the date stamped on the envelope, and it was delivered to us three days later. That was a good four months in between! That came as no surprise to me, though. It’s been that way most of the time.

It is worse in the lower courts. They blatantly falsify dates to make it appear that resolutions or decisions were rendered within the periods set in the guidelines. For example, a decision was supposedly dated January 2015—within 90 days from the date the case was deemed submitted for decision—but what gave the lie to that date was the date it was mailed to the parties—November 2015! It was easy to see where the falsification was done!

But back to the Supreme Court. It is bad enough that it often takes an eternity for that Court to resolve cases (the constitutional mandate for it to render decisions within two years has been interpreted by the honorable justices to mean only as a “suggestion”!); but why do its clerks behave like they also have all the time in the world to do their jobs? How difficult could it be for them to send copies of the Court’s resolutions within a week’s time? I cannot, for the life of me, understand why it should take three or four months to route papers to various offices for recording within the same building before finally being mailed?

It seems the perennial slack the Supreme Court justices have been freely giving themselves in the performance of their constitutional duties has really rubbed off on their minions. As above, so below! How can we ever expect speedy administration of justice in this country when something as routine as mailing gets inexplicably snagged every step of the way? Those people should stop blaming the postal office for the delay because the truth of the matter is it now generally takes mail matters just five days or less to get delivered in Metro Manila from the date of posting.
—CARMELA N. NOBLEJAS, [email protected]