SC junks immorality case vs lawyer
The Supreme Court has dismissed an administrative complaint against a lawyer accused of engaging in an illicit affair with his student, after finding that the complainant had conspired to keep their alleged relationship of more than 20 years a secret.
“The Court cannot entertain the allegation of immorality because she is neither the aggrieved spouse nor an unwilling victim,” the Supreme Court en banc said in its decision on the complaint filed by Maria Theresa Imperial against lawyer Pastor Marcelo Reyes Jr.
Citing the position of Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, the high tribunal emphasized that while marital infidelity can never be justified, not all cases automatically constitute grounds for administrative liability based on immorality.
“For one, jurisprudence teaches us that the standard for determining morality of conduct in disciplinary proceedings must be secular and not religious,” the high court said in the decision penned by Associate Justice Henri Jean Paul Inting.
Even assuming the respondent committed a deplorable act by maintaining an extramarital affair with the complainant, it ruled that “such misconduct had no real measurable impact on his duties as a lawyer.”
‘Fourth party’
Based on court records, Reyes, a married man, was Imperial’s law professor in the subject “secured transactions” at San Sebastian College Recoletos in 1994.
Imperial said she initially rejected Reyes’ offers of affection but after years of courtship, she eventually agreed to be involved in an extramarital relationship, which started from 1998 until she was “discarded” by the respondent in 2019.
She further alleged that a lawyer-client relationship was formed between them sometime in 2014 and that Reyes agreed to handle several cases for her, pro bono.
But after their fight in December 2018, which allegedly involved a “fourth party,” Reyes purportedly refused to talk to Imperial and started billing her for his legal services.
In 2019, after paying P200,000 and receiving her case files, Imperial discovered that one of her civil cases had been dismissed, that the accused in one criminal case was acquitted on grounds of reasonable doubt, and that Reyes unilaterally withdrew from a civil case without giving her any notice—prompting her to file a complaint against the lawyer.
Burden of proof
In his response, Reyes admitted the student-teacher relationship but denied having any affair with Imperial.
He also admitted representing her as her lawyer in various cases, but he chose to disengage himself and his law firm from further handling her cases after Imperial had supposedly become “disrespectful and difficult to deal with.”
The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) in 2023 recommended that Reyes be held guilty of a serious offense under Canon VI, Section 33, of the Code of Professional Responsibility and Accountability for having breached his marital vows for more than two decades and for having abused his position as a law professor when he engaged in an illicit affair with his student.
But since Imperial already knew that Reyes was married, in addition to her conspiring to keep their relationship secret, the investigating commissioner said the respondent should only be suspended from the practice of law for seven months.
The IBP later increased the recommended period of suspension from seven months to three years.
Disagreeing with IBP
The Supreme Court, however, disagreed with the IBP’s findings and recommendation.
It noted that administrative cases were meant to keep lawyers’ professional conduct in check and not as a vehicle to assert private rights not connected to their professional duties.
The court added that in administrative disciplinary cases, the burden of proof is on the complainant to establish the allegations with enough evidence.
“Unfortunately, there is nothing in the record, except complainant’s bare allegations, that would prove that respondent and his law firm were providing free legal services in consideration of the alleged illicit affair,” it said.
“Further, respondent cannot be held administratively liable for the alleged negligence based on mere conjectures, suppositions, or surmises,” the Supreme Court added.
