CA junks enforcement of $2-B claim by Marcos human rights victims

The Court of Appeals (CA) has denied the petition of the so-called human rights victims during the martial law regime of the late former President Ferdinand Marcos to enforce a final ruling of a United States (US) court awarding them about $2 billion in damages.

In a decision, the CA said

that the ruling handed down by the Hawaii District Court in 1995 is not binding because that US court had no jurisdiction as the right to due process of all the unnamed claimants, as well as the respondent Marcos estate, had been violated.

“To our minds, the failure of the final judgment to meet the standards of what a valid judgment is in our country compels us to deny its enforcement,” the CA said in a decision written by Associate Justice Normandie Pizarro and concurred in by Associate Justices Samuel Gaerlan and Jhosep Lopez.

“Rules of comity should not be made to prevail over our Constitution and we cannot allow foreign impositions to trample upon our sovereignty,” it stressed.

With the decision, the CA affirmed the ruling handed down by the Makati City regional trial court (RTC) which dismissed the complaint for recognition and enforcement of a foreign judgment filed by Priscilla Mijares, Loretta Ann Rosales, Hilda Narciso Sr., Mariani Dimaranan, and Joel Lamangan in their behalf and on behalf of the class plaintiffs in US case, Class Action No. MDL 840, consisting of approximately 10,000 human rights victims during the Marcos regime.

The CA said that the Hawaii District Court certified MDL 840 as a class suit, which should mean that the parties who filed the case both for themselves and those they seek to represent share a common legal interest – “that is, the subject of the suit over which there exists a cause of action is common to all persons who belong to the group.”

But it noted that in final judgment of the Hawaii court and sought to be enforced in the Philippines, the purported claimants were classified into three subclasses -- torture, summary execution, and disappearance victims.

It pointed out that such classification of the claimants is an obvious recognition that “no common question of law and fact exists between/ among the claimants.”

“In other words, each claimant in MDL 840 had a right, if any, only to the damage that such individual may have suffered, and not one of them had any right to or can claim any interest in the damage or injury which another suffered,” the CA explained.

“Hence, MDL 840 was not and should not have been brought as a class suit.

At the same time, the CA said that the Hawaii District Court failed to ensure that the 10 Filipinos who initiated the complaint were truly and legally authorized by the other purported claimants. Those who initiated the class suit in Hawaii were Celso Hilao, Josefina Hilao Forcadilla, Arturo Revilla, Jr., Rodolfo Benosa, Danila Fuente, Renato Pineda, Adora Faye de Vera, Domiciano Amparo, Christopher Sorio, and Jose Duran.

It pointed out that in the Hawaii court case, the complainants failed to identify the other claimants nor presented any power of attorney executed by them.