Quo warranto case vs ABS-CBN improper — former chief justice
Credit to Author: Jomar Canlas, TMT| Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2020 16:19:09 +0000
Retired chief justice Artemio Panganiban on Monday said the quo warranto petition filed against ABS-CBN Corp. by the solicitor general was improper and that there were other remedies available to the network.
Panganiban said Congress has the power to review the franchise renewal, but not the high court via a quo warranto proceeding.
“Congress can say we will revoke your franchise because you violated the terms of franchise. The revocation must be the violation of the terms and conditions because the franchise has certain conditions,” he said in an interview with the ABS-CBN News Channel.
The former chief magistrate also said under the exhaustion of administrative remedies rule, complaints against ABS-CBN could be filed before the Securities and Exchange Commission in cases of questionable Philippine Depositary Receipts and at the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) if there were violations on its use of airwaves.
Panganiban argued that there were issues of facts involved in the case, which the high court is not supposed to tackle that must be tossed first to the Court of Appeals or the lower courts.
He said the Supreme Court had already ruled that factual issues must be resolved by a lower court or by the proper administrative agencies.
“There are many issues of facts, which were brought up which cannot be decided without first being resolved, and the Supreme Court has said many times…the latest of which is in Gios Samar vs DoTC (Department of Transportation and Communication), where the court expressly said that when there are issues of facts the court cannot take them up and must dismiss the case even if the reason for them is transcendental importance,” Panganiban stressed.
He explained that the quo warranto case filed against former chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno is different from quo warranto filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida. The former case involves the violations before Sereno became a magistrate of the high court until she became chief justice because of her non-filing of her Statements of Assets Liabilities and Net Worth, while the ABS-CBN case involves alleged violations committed after the franchise was given to the company.