Fired attorney slaps PAO chief with P1M suit

Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) chief Persida Rueda-Acosta was slapped with P1.1 million damage suit on Friday for her alleged illegal termination of a regional public attorney in Cebu. In a petition filed at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court, petitioner, Atty. Terencia Ermi-Rivera asked the sala of Judge Jocelyn-Solis Reyes to order Acosta and the officials of PAO’s accounting and disbursing office to pay her P 1 million for actual and moral damages and P 150,000 for exemplary damages and attorney’s fees. Rivera, formerly regional public attorney for Regional Office - 7 in Cebu, also asked the court to issue a writ of preliminary injunction directing Acosta to restore her in PAO’s payroll and entitle her salary and other forms of compensation. In her petition, Rivera narrated that she was appointed as Public Attorney V on March 8, 2004 and was assigned at the PAO-Regional Office lll in San Fernando, Pampanga. On August, 2004, she was re-assigned to PAO-Regional Office IV-B (MIMAROPA), a non-existent region in the plantilla of PAO, being part of Region IV and under only one regional public attorney. But on May 2005, the petitioner was reverted to her previous post in PAO-Region 3 but only to be re-assigned anew on Nov. 1, 2005 to PAO-Regional Office IV-B. The respondent, however, re-assigned Rivera on Dec. 19, 2006 from PAO-Regional Office IV-B to PAO-Regional Office V in Bicol as the Regional Public Attorney as replacement to Atty. Edgar Bendana who was then about to retire on January 3, 2007 and also because Congress had allegedly not appropriated funds for PAO-Regional Office IV-B. On January 11, 2007, Acosta issued another re-assignment order wherein she re-assigned the petitioner in Cebu effective Jan. 15, 2007. The reassignment was done to replace Regional Public Attorney Hermilo Beltran who retired on Jan. 5, 2007 and as a response to Bendana’s request for extension of his services. The petitioner said that on Feb. 28, 2007, she went to Cebu in order to assume her post but she was surprised and shocked when she found out that Acosta had already replaced her with Atty. Ramon Gomez since February 12. On March 1, Rivera received a fax notice of replacement informing her about the alleged appointment of Atty. Gomez by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as PAO-Regional Public Attorney for Region VII. On the same day, to her “great embarrassment and humiliation", an all-male contingent consisting of two PAO deputy chiefs of PAO, Atty. Gomez and four National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents, allegedly forcibly took her out from her office at PAO-Regional Office VII. The petitioner said Acosta’s “hasty act" was “in fact a clever move to dislodge" her from her post as regional public attorney for Region VII. “The acts of respondent (Acosta) were evidently cruel, in gross bad faith, extremely malicious. Petitioner’s only surmise is that respondent had resented an honest mistake when petitioner failed to prefix before the respondent’s name with “honorable," in one of the communications signed by her, a mistake that respondent appears to have resented no end and nursing all along," said Rivera in her petition. Rivera added that the act of Acosta is without any factual and legal basis characterized by evident bad faith, manifest partiality and gross inexcusable negligence in violation of the Constitution and Section 3(e) of Republic Act 3019 Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. - GMANews.TV