SC asked to review Australian’s P60-M pay claim

MANILA, Philippines—The Office of the Court Administrator (OCA) has asked the Supreme Court to act on a complaint against alleged irregularity in a high court division ruling granting P60 million in compensation to an Australian who had no permit to work in the Philippines when he claimed to have had employment status for a project that never took off in Baguio City.

OCA senior chief staff officer Ma. Luisa Laurea asked the high court’s Third Division to take “whatever action may be deemed appropriate under the circumstances” in the complaint filed by Eulalio Ganzon.

Laurea’s request to Lucita Soriano, the division’s deputy clerk of court, was based on an endorsement letter from the Department of Justice chief state counsel, Ricardo Paras III, who acted on orders by Justice Secretary Leila de Lima.

De Lima’s action was prompted by Ganzon’s letter to the justice secretary asking for help in seeking legal remedy against the high court’s September 18, 2009, ruling penned by now retired Associate Justice Consuelo Ynares-Santiago.

The September 18 ruling overturned the decisions of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) and the Court of Appeals and awarded P60 million in compensation to Australian Andrew McBurnie who accused Ganzon of unlawfully terminating his employment in the construction firm E. Ganzon Inc. (EGI).

Ganzon said the NLRC and the appellate court ruled that McBurnie was “not an employee, but a business partner of EGI” in EGI’s hotel project in Baguio City which did not materialize in 1999.

He also said that it was established that the foreigner did not have a working permit at the time when he supposedly worked for EGI.

“The decision will judicially legislate a rule allowing foreigners to work in the country absolutely without … an alien employment permit and a work visa, and effectively revoke all laws to the contrary,” Ganzon said.

“If uncorrected, the (court’s) decision will result in an award of more than P60 million in ‘salaries’ to a single foreigner who had no working visa and no alien employment permit, among so many irregularities,” he added.

Ganzon also told De Lima that McBurnie purportedly filed the case against him in 2002, almost three years after he left the country in November 1999.

He said records from the Bureau of Immigration and McBurnie’s own admission showed that the Australian did not return to the Philippines to attend any of the 14 hearings conducted by the NLRC.