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By Lea Manto Beltran, Special Assignments
Writer
Driven out of the gasoline station she and her
family own, Amanda Cruz is convinced she is a victim of a conspiracy
involving a giant petroleum company and high judiciary officials.
“What happened to us is so barbaric. I can’t
just sit here and let them do this to my family. I will fight this
time,” said Cruz, president of the United Petroleum Dealers’
Association. She described what happened on January 18 when she, her
husband and two sons were evicted from the gas station on Altura
Street, Santa Mesa, in Manila by Manila Sheriff Eugenio Soriaso with
the help of 30 policemen and 20 security guards employed by Petron
Corp.
The eviction culminated a bitter, 28-year legal
battle Cruz had waged against Petron.
With her legal options running out, Cruz decided
to take her cause to the streets. On February 21 Cruz, armed with a
placard and a megaphone, staged a one-woman rally in front of the
Supreme Court and accused Petron and the Court of falsifying the
resolution that justified her eviction from the station.
On Tuesday Cruz took her protest before the
Department of Justice. After haranguing Petron and the judiciary
with her megaphone, she was allowed a few minutes with Justice
Secretary Raul M. Gonzalez.
Tears streaming down her face, Cruz tried to
persuade Gonzalez to accept the falsification charges she intends to
file against the Supreme Court officials, headed by Chief Justice
Hilario Davide Jr.
Gonzalez, however, said he has no jurisdiction
over the charges. He reminded Cruz that the chief justice cannot be
charged criminally unless he is impeached first.
Besides Davide, Cruz named retired Supreme Court
clerk of court Virginia Ancheta-Soriano in her complaint.
She alleged that the Court officials falsified
the Court’s resolution regarding her case against Petron.
The Cruzes had asked the Court to stop the
Manila Regional Trial Court from enforcing the eviction order.
Petron, which said it owns the property on which
the station stands, alleged that the Cruzes failed to pay rent.
The Cruzes petitioned the Supreme Court to order
Sheriff Eugenio Soriaso to return P8.5 million and the seven
gasoline tankers, which he and the police officers confiscated when
they carried out the eviction.
In her manifesto filed with the Supreme Court,
Cruz said Petron and members of the Court’s records section
committed fraud by deleting three lines from the Court’s September
8, 1999, decision to make it appear that the Cruzes’ lease on the
station had expired.
Petron supposedly obtained the order after the
favorable ruling of Judge Manuel Barrios of Branch 55 of the Manila
Regional Trial Court.
Cruz insisted the Manila court erred in ordering
their eviction because she and Petron have not resolved all three
contracts they entered into—a retail-dealer contract, equipment
and lease agreement, and a lease to dealer contract.
The resolution favoring Petron declared that the
three contracts were independent agreements such that the
termination of one didn’t apply to the remaining two.
“I have filed charges against all of them and
I am about to file other charges until I can prove that we were
illegally evicted from the gasoline station that I operated for
almost 41 years,” Cruz said.
She is determined to press charges against the
all those involved in what she called an “illegal and large-scale
criminal conspiracy.”
She said she filed a number of charges—libel,
civil damages, antigraft and corrupt practices, illegal possession
of firearms—against Sheriff Soriaso and Judge Barrios, the
Lockheed Detective and Watchman Security Agency, Ricah and
Pythagoria’s Contractor and various police officials.
Among the “inhuman procedures” she said were
committed during the eviction:
Ricah Contractor fenced the site without order
from the Manila city hall or any court.
Pythagoria’s Contractor illegally cut the
electric power of the gasoline station and the gasoline hose of the
five dispensing pumps. It also threw the gasoline products all over
the place.
Her husband and sons “were cuffed even without
a warrant of arrest on the order of Col. Ferdinand Quirante of
Precinct 4 with the assistance of Lockheed Security Guards, SWAT
Team, Antiriot Team, policewomen and policemen of the United Nations
Headquarters.
Lockheed Security Agency came without a
break-open order but smashed the glass door of the gasoline station.
Cruz was able to recover the seven tank trucks
“but they had emptied almost all them.”
Petron looks at the case differently. “The
enforcement of the writ of execution is the result of efforts
undertaken by our company through the legal process and within the
judicial system. Petron is entitled to recover possession of the
site of its former station, of which it has long been unlawfully
deprived,” Petron’s lawyer, Joel C. Cruz, explained in a
statement.
Cruz said the issue is not the nonpayment of
rent, but whether the lease with Petron has expired or not.
She said she had been paying the monthly rent of
P427,500 to the Metropolitan Trial Court since 1993, but that the
Court of Appeals issued a resolution ordering that the amount be
deposited and subsequently released.
“The question here is, has our contract to
lease with Petron Corp. expired? We didn’t violate any provisions
of the dealership contract and my lease to the dealer has always
been automatic renewal,” said Cruz.
Petron said the court ruled in 1999 that the
lease expired in 1992.
In 1977 Petron and the Cruz couple entered into
three contracts:
The retail dealer contract, under which the
Cruzes are to buy petroleum products from Petron.
The equipment lease agreement, under which
Petron leased to the Cruzes equipment for selling products.
The lease to dealer contract, under which Petron
leased to the Cruzes the property where the station is to be
established.
The contracts were renewed in 1982 and,
according to Cruz, renewed in 1987 for five years.
“Even before it was still Esso Philippines [Esso
and PhilOil merged and became Petron] I’d been a loyal dealer of
that mother company. That’s why I received many awards as a
dealer,” she said.
Cruz first got into the oil industry when she
managed a gasoline station in Gapan, Nueva Ecija. She was still
single then and a practicing obstetrician in her hometown in Peñaranda,
Nueva Ecija.
She married Francisco when she was 24 and
stopped her obstetric practice, because her husband’s family gave
her a 200-square-meter gasoline station on Altura. The Cruz family
at that time owned almost 60 stations.
“Altura station was the first gas station I
owned; that’s why I’m ready to fight for it. We expanded the
station to 900 square meters. We even lived near the station, so
that I could take care of it while raising our four children,”
Cruz said.
Her problems with Petron began in 1987. Records
from the Court of Appeals show that Petrophil, in a letter on May
21, 1987, advised Cruz it was terminating her hauling contract. Cruz
asked Petrophil to reconsider but it denied her appeal on June 5.
On June 23, 1987, Cruz filed a civil suit
against Petrophil with the Regional Trial Court of Manila,
challenging the termination of the contract and declaring its
suspension as unjustified and contrary to its terms.
On March 11, 1988, Jessie de Vera, Marcial Mulig,
Antonio and Rufino Cuenca, all tank-truck drivers of Cruz, sued for
damages Antonio Santos, Petrophil operations manager, Crispino A. de
Castro, Pandacan terminal manager, and Jaime Tamayo, Pandacan
terminal superintendent.
The two cases were consolidated and jointly
tried.
The court handed its decision on the two cases
on May 29, 1991. In the first case Petrophil was ordered to pay Cruz
P309,723.65 as unearned hauling charges and P20,000 as attorney’s
fees.
In the second case Petrophil was ordered to pay
Vera P64,390 and Cuenca P5,000 as unearned income and attorney’s
fees.
The legal fight did not stop there but got
nastier. In 1990 Petron terminated the lease to dealer contract with
the Cruzes and demanded that they vacate the gas station.
When the Cruzes refused, Petron filed an
ejectment suit against them, which was dismissed by the Metropolitan
Trial Court.
Petron said the dismissal was due to failure to
prosecute. But Cruz said, “Petron couldn’t present any evidence
that we violated any provisions of the dealership contract.”
She said she was evicted because she exposed
anomalies allegedly being committed by Petron.
A second ejectment case filed by Petron in 1991
was also dismissed. Petron said the court upheld that the contract
was “implied” to be renewed until May 1992.
Two days before the lease was to expire in 1992,
Petron again demanded the Cruzes to leave the station. They refused
and Petron filed a third ejectment case with the Manila court.
The court extended the contract for 15 months,
after which the Cruzes were to vacate the premises and pay rent,
attorney’s fees and costs.
The Cruzes appealed to the regional trial court,
which affirmed the Manila court’s decision. They brought the case
before the Court of Appeals, which reversed the rulings of the lower
courts and ordered the case dismissed, saying Petron has no cause of
action to file the third ejectment suit.
In 2000 Petron filed a fourth ejectment case
against the Cruzes with the Metropolitan Trial Court. They fought
back by seeking a temporary restraining order. Judge Hermogenes
Liwag of RTC Branch 55 issued an order of permanent Injunction. The
judge also called for the “maintenance of the status quo at least
until after the ejectment suit filed by the defendant Petron with
the Metropolitan Trial Court.”
The status quo was broken by a writ of execution
issued by Judge Manuel Barrios, who took over after Judge Liwag
died.
“It’s been four years [2000-04] and this
status quo order was never revoked or dissolved by the higher
courts. Why is it that when Petron asked Judge Barrios to issue a
writ of execution, it was immediately granted? Why is it that RTC
Branch 55 has two conflicting orders?” Cruz asked.
Petron said the writ was based on a ruling in
April 2001 ordering the Cruzes to vacate the station. The Cruzes
appealed the ruling before the Court of Appeals, which dismissed the
petition for review twice last year, Petron said.
On October 22, 2004, Sheriff Soriaso issued a
notice to vacate to the Cruzes.
In response, Cruz filed a petition for review to
the Supreme Court on December 22.
On January 11, 2005, Soriaso’s group tried to
enforce the eviction order but failed after the Cruzes demanded an
official order from the Supreme Court, where they had filed the
petition for review.
But after a week Soriaso came back and succeeded
in evicting the Cruzes.
--With Jomar Canlas
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