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The Pasay City Regional Trial Court on Thursday cleared three Green
Cross Inc. officials anew on the estafa case filed by former company
president Gonzalo Co It, marking the fifth legal victory for Anthony
Co and his siblings in the last three months.
In a 28-page decision, Pasay Judge Eugenio de la
Cruz junked the motion for reconsideration filed by state
prosecutors for Co It, finding no merit in their arguments against
his earlier order which dismissed the estafa case.
The judge reiterated that, based on the evidence
presented by the prosecution itself, there was no misappropriation
of company shares on the part of Anthony Co and his siblings,
because Co It knew and approved of the additional subscription made
by them in 1986. This is evidenced by Co It’s signatures on the
certificate of increase in the shares of stocks which the
prosecution presented.
“In granting the motion to quash, the court
actually relied on the evidence of the prosecution,” de la Cruz
ruled.
In the same decision, de la Cruz also denied the
motion to inhibit filed by the prosecutors, rejecting their argument
that a judge must inhibit himself when asked to do so regardless of
whether or not the motion to inhibit has merit.
Noting that the prosecution moved to inhibit him
only after he had ruled to dismiss the case, the judge added that
the Supreme Court has “ruled that motions for inhibition or
disqualification filed after a ruling on the merits has been made
must be denied on the rationale that a litigant cannot be permitted
to speculate upon the action of a court, only to raise on objection
of after a decision has been rendered.”
“The grant of motions for inhibition or
disqualification even without clear and convincing evidence of bias
or partiality, as in this case, would effectively allow the parties
to a suit to resort to ‘a form of forum shopping’, which,
according to the Supreme Court, would be antithetical to the speedy
and fair administration of justice,” said de la Cruz.
-- James Konstantin Galvez
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