Court awards P7.5M to kin of journo killed in road crash

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MANILA, Philippines — The Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC) has convicted two bus drivers and ordered their bus companies to pay P7.46 million in damages for the wrongful death of former Philippine Daily Inquirer writer and Manila Times editor in chief Lourdes “Chit” Estella-Simbulan.

RTC Judge Ralph Lee of Branch 83 in a nine-page decision, dated April 22, sentenced bus drivers Daniel Espinosa and Victor Ancheta to imprisonment of two years, four months and one day for causing the death of Estella-Simbulan in a collision at Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City on May 13, 2011.

The court also ordered bus companies Universal Guiding Star Bus Line Corp. and Nova Auto Transport Bus Corp. to pay the family of Estella-Simbulan P7.46 million in damages in consideration of the insolvency of the two bus drivers. She was married to University of the Philippines (UP) professor Roland Simbulan

Estella-Simbulan, then 54 and a journalism professor at the UP College of Mass Communications, was onboard a taxi en route to the UP Ayala Technohub on May 13, 2011, for a reunion with high school classmates when her taxi was hit twice by the buses driven by Ancheta and Espinosa.

The court noted that the bus of Ancheta was “recklesly driven” while Espinosa’s was travelling at a “fast pace” resulting into the accident.

The judge ruled that both Espinosa and Ancheta had a “clear last chance” to avoid the accident if they had been driving at a “reasonable rate of speed” and with “extraordinary care.”

“Both accused had the last chance to avoid the collision had they exercised reasonable care and precaution in driving their respective buses. Both of the accused being public utility drivers should have primary concern not just for their safety but also to their passengers and fellow motorists,” the decision read.

The court also noted the achievements of Simbulan as “one of the country’s premier academicians and journalists.”

She was among the first batch of journalists to emerge after the People Power Revolution and rapidly climbed the newsroom ladders of leading Philippine newspapers, like the Inquirer, Tempo and Malaya.

She was the editor in chief of the Manila Times in 1999, then owned by the Gokongwei family, when it claimed that then President Joseph Estrada was an “unwitting godfather” to a controversial deal between the National Power Corp. and an Argentinian power firm Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona SA.