THE recent decision of the Court of Appeals (CA) giving Camp John Hay Development Co. (CJHDevco) a respite in its quarrel with the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) will place the government at a disadvantage, an official of the state-owned agency said on Monday.
Peter Paul Andrew Flores, who heads the BCDA’s legal services, said his office hopes that its appeal before the Supreme Court will be found meritorious.
“The BCDA is confident that the patently erroneous CA decision will not succeed in the Supreme Court. Public interest will eventually prevail,” he said.
The state-owned agency has immediately filed an appeal before the High Court, scoring the appellate court’s decision as “highly irregular and disadvantageous to the government when it reversed and modified a decision of the Arbitral Tribunal of the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center last February that ordered the private CJHDevco to vacate Camp John Hay and deliver leased property, including new constructions and permanent improvements to BCDA.”
It also ordered the BCDA to return P1.42 billion to CJHDevco, which the latter paid to the BCDA as lease payments.
The Regional Trial Court in Baguio issued a decision for the final award to make the tribunal decision binding, executory and non-appealable, and a writ of execution.
However, the CJHDevco was able to secure a temporary restraining order (TRO) from the CA and the appellate court eventually issued a decision not only stopping the implementation of the final award but modifying it.
The CA’s 67-page decision, under Associate Justice Noel Tijam, modified the final award declaring CJHDevco’s obligation to vacate and deliver the leased property to the BCDA as dependent on the agency’s payment of P1.4 billion, which effectively rendered the arbitral award empty.
The BCDA, which was supposed to recover all new construction and permanent improvements as stated in the final award will get nothing.
Tijam also ruled that sublessees should not be evicted, contrary to the admission of Camp John Hay that its contractual relationship with the so-called third parties was a sublease.
“CJHDevco may have misled sublessees into believing that they were not affected by the final award,” Flores said.
He explained that since the start of the lease of the government property to CJHDevco, from 1998 to 2000, CJHDevco fraudulently paid more than P1.274 billion as dividends and advances to its stockholders, affiliates but told the BCDA that it was financially incapacitated to defer rental payments of at least P1.275 billion during the same period.”
“The CA went beyond its jurisdiction in a petition for certiorari. The CA decision be enforced, government will not benefit because the sublessees have already paid their lease to CJHDevco until 2046,” he said.
‘Recognize the right of third party’
Sought for comment, CJHDevco Chairman and CEO Robert John Sobrepeña said the ruling of the CA “merely implemented the decision of the arbitral court.”
“The ruling of the CA is completely compatible with the arbitral decision. The difference mainly is with regard to the third party, which were never mentioned in the arbitral decision. But the Baguio RTC decision mentioned the third party, making the CA issue a ruling on that. The CA ruled that third party were buyers in good faith,” he said.
He argued that the third-party buyers have the right to their properties, adding that there should be “just compensation” if the court asks them to vacate.
“They have to recognize the right of the third party, whose monies were used to pay the interest damages to CJHDevco in behalf of BCDA,” Sobrepeña said.