The shortlist of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) nominating three associate justices for chief justice, despite the pendency of impeachment complaints against them which warrant their disqualification, is infirm and must be withdrawn.
Shortlisted are Justices Teresita De Castro, Diosdado Peralta and Lucas Bersamin who are all facing impeachment complaints for culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust.
It is a hollow and self-serving rhetoric to claim that the JBC does not need to consider the disqualification of the shortlisted justices because the impeachment complaints against them are not pending while awaiting congressional action.
On the contrary, the pendency of a complaint is reckoned from its inception with the filing of the complaint or action in the proper forum.
The accepted legal definition is that an “action or suit is said to be ‘pending’ from its inception until the rendition of final judgment” (Wentworth v. Farmington, 48 N. H. 210; Mauney v. Pemberton, 75 N.C. 221; ex parte Munford, 57 Mo. 603).
Black’s Law Dictionary defines a pending action or suit as one that has “begun but not yet completed; unsettled; undetermined; in the process of settlement or adjustment.”
Of the same essence is Section 5, Rule 1 of the 1997 Rules of Court, which provides that a “civil action is commenced by the filing of the original complaint in court.”
Verily, the filing of the impeachment complaints on Thursday afternoon with the proper office of the House Secretary General against the seven justices who ousted Chief Justice Sereno on a mere petition for quo warranto,commenced the impeachment proceedings and said complaints are pending disposition.
Just like an administrative case whose pendency bars the nomination or appointment of applicants to a judicial position, the pendency of the impeachment complaints, which are more serious than an administrative case, must also disqualify Justices De Castro, Peralta and Bersamin from nomination for appointment as Supreme Court chief justice.
EDCEL C. LAGMAN