MANILA, Philippines—The possibility of an amicable settlement between the opposing camps in the controversial tee house brawl at an Antipolo golf course grew dim Tuesday as the lawyers of the Pangandaman and the Dela Paz families each indicated they would not make a first offer.

Although both camps said they were open to settling the criminal cases each filed against the other on Monday, they insisted that they would rather push through with their complaints unless the other party approached them to discuss settlement.

"If the expectation is for our clients to initiate the settlement talk, that's a little bit farfetched," said Teodoro Pastrana, the lawyer of Nasser Junior and Hussein Pangandaman, sons of the agrarian reform secretary.

He said his clients had been "maligned left and right" following the allegations of businessman Delfin Dela Paz that they beat him and his 14-year-old son Bino over a dispute about golfing etiquette on December 26 at the Valley Golf and Country Club.

The Pangandamans said the fight had been instigated by the Dela Pazes and that the latter had been the aggressors in the melee.

In a phone interview, Pastrana said the condition reportedly set by the Dela Pazes that the Pangandamans should make the first move toward an out-of-court settlement was "foul."

On the other hand, Raymond Fortun, the lawyer of the Dela Paz family, said the Pangandamans, a family of public officials, appeared to have "too much pride" in refusing to approach the Dela Pazes, whom he described as a "low-income family."

"It's my clients who suffered injuries," Fortun said in a separate phone interview, noting that the Pangandaman brothers had not personally apologized to the Dela Pazes (although their father made a public apology "as a father and as a government official.")

Reacting to the child abuse charge filed by the Pangandamans against his clients for allegedly threatening Hussein's eight-year-old son Angelo prior to the clubhouse brawl, Fortun said they were barking up the wrong tree.

"If the boy suffered psychological trauma, it's from seeing a 14-year-old bloodied … It's the boy's father who should be charged for exposing his own child to certain incidents," the lawyer said.

On Monday, the Dela Pazes charged the Pangandamans and three unnamed golfing companions with physical injuries in relation to the child abuse law in the Antipolo Prosecutor's Office.

The Pangandamans filed a complaint of their own an hour later against the Dela Paz family, charging them with physical injuries, child abuse, grave and light threats, and grave coercion.

The lawyers said it was likely that the prosecutor assigned to the cases would consolidate them for purposes of convenience.

As of Tuesday, Pastrana and Fortun had received no word if their respective complaints had been raffled to a prosecutor, or when the preliminary investigation would begin.

Pastrana said his clients were planning to file a separate libel case against the Dela Pazes for allegedly spreading false accounts about the incident on the blog of Dela Paz's 18-year-old daughter Bambee, as well as in media reports.

Fortun said they were free to file whatever case against his clients.

But he said he would not advise Bambee to take down her blog entry about the incident, which had been widely circulated on the web, reasoning that it was an "accurate" story.