Case Digest: Borjal vs. Court of Appeals (G.R. No. 126466)

 

Borjal vs. Court of Appeals (G.R. No. 126466)

 

Primary Holding.

Requisites for a libel suit:

1. The victim should be identifiable although it is not necessary that he be named;
2.  Not sufficient that the offended party recognized himself as the person attacked or defamed - at least a third person could identify him to be the object of the libelous publication.

 

Facts.

1. The conference, which according to private respondent, was estimated to cost around Php1, 815,000.00  would be funded through solicitations from various sponsors.
2. On February 28, 1989, at the organizational meeting of the FNCLT, private respondent Francisco Wenceslao was elected Executive Director. As such, he wrote numerous solicitation letters to the business community for the support of the conference.
3. Between May and July 1989, a series of articles written by petitioner Borjal was published on different dates in his column Jaywalker. The articles dealt with the alleged anomalous activities of an “organizer of a conference” without naming or identifying private respondent. Neither did it refer to the FNCLT.
4. Trial Court decided in favor of Wenceslao and ordered petitioners to indemnify. The Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the court a quo but reduced the amount of the monetary award.
5. Petitioners filed a motion for reconsideration but CA denied the motion in its Resolution of 12 September 1996. Hence, the petition for instant review.
6. Although in CA ruling it found that Borjal’s column writings sufficiently identified Wenceslao as the “conference organizer, ” as well as citing FNCLT, the letterheads, donation from sponsors. The Supreme Court held that requisites to maintain libel have not been complied with the case at bar.
7. Articles do not identify Wenceslao as the organizer of the conference. Neither did the FNCLT letterheads disclose the identity of the conference organizer since these contained only an enumeration of names where Wenceslao was described as the Executive Director, not the conference organizer. No less than the private respondent himself admitted that the FNCLT had several organizers and that he was only a part of the organization. Identification is grossly inadequate when even the alleged offended party is himself unsure that he was the object of the verbal attack.
8. “Indisputably, petitioner Borjal's questioned writings are not within the exceptions of Art. 354 of The Revised Penal Code for, as correctly observed by the appellate court, they are neither private communications nor fair and true report without any comments or remarks. However this does not necessarily mean that they are not privileged. To be sure, the enumeration under Art. 354 is not an exclusive list of qualifiedly privileged communications since fair commentaries on matters of public interest are likewise privileged. The rule on privileged communications had its genesis not in the nation's penal code but in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech and of the press.”

 

 

Issue.

Whether or not the articles in question are libelous, sufficient identifying private respondent Wenceslao.

 

Held.

No.

 

Ruling.

Petition is granted. The Decision of the Court of Appeals of 25 March 1996 and its Resolution of 12 September 1996 denying reconsideration are, REVERSED and SET ASIDE, and the complaint for damages against petitioners is DISMISSED. Petitioners’ counterclaim for damages is likewise DISMISSED for lack of merit. No costs.

 

Supplementing facts.

1. The doctrine of fair comment means that while in general every discreditable imputation publicly made is deemed false, because every man is presumed innocent until his guilt is judicially proved, and every false imputation is deemed malicious, nevertheless, when the discreditable imputation is directed against a public person in his public capacity, it is not necessarily actionable. In order that such discreditable imputation to a public official may be actionable, it must either be a false allegation of fact or a comment based on a false supposition. If the comment is an expression of opinion, based on established facts, then it is immaterial that the opinion happens to be mistaken, as long as it might reasonably be inferred from the facts.
2. While, generally, malice can be presumed from defamatory words, the privileged character of a communication destroys the presumption of malice.
3. Furthermore, to be considered malicious, the libelous statements must be shown to have been written or published with the knowledge that they are false or in reckless disregard of whether they are false or not. "Reckless disregard of what is false or not" means that the defendant entertains serious doubt as to the truth of the publication, or that he possesses a high degree of awareness of their probable falsity.