John Hay row: CA order on arbitration is moot

Camp John Hay. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—The Court of Appeals (CA) has sustained a Baguio City court order to put a contractual dispute over Camp John Hay under arbitration, but it came a little too late.

The appellate court ruling may have become moot because the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center (PDRC) has completed the arbitration process between the developer and administrator of Camp John Hay on the 1996 development contract to convert 247 hectares of the former US rest and recreation camp into a tourism estate, said lawyer Manuel Ubarra Jr., counsel for Camp John Hay Development Corp. (CJHDevco).

Ubarra said PDRC would soon rule on the dispute, which has delayed the full development of Camp John Hay.

CJHDevco, the developer, and the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) had been feuding over the contract and the developer’s debts since 2011 until Judge Cecilia Corazon Archog, of the Baguio City Regional Trial court, ordered the two parties to undergo arbitration proceedings in July 2012.

Evidence seen

The BCDA had elevated Archog’s ruling to the appellate court but also submitted itself to arbitration.

BCDA officials did not respond to the Inquirer’s calls on Wednesday but in earlier interviews, the agency president, lawyer Arnel Paciano Casanova, had confirmed that the arbitrator had seen all evidence related to the dispute.

In a decision on Sept. 30, the appellate court’s special 11th Division upheld Archog’s ruling.

The CA, in a decision by Justice Victoria Isabel Paredes, emphasized the Supreme Court’s policy to encourage arbitration as an alternative method of dispute resolution.

“These issues are best threshed out in the appropriate arbitration proceedings,” the court ruled.

SC ruling

“It bears emphasis that the parties, in this case, have been directed to submit their controversy to arbitration, with due stress on the policy of the Supreme Court to encourage arbitration,” it said.

The dispute began in 2011, when CJHDevco withdrew from a renegotiated lease agreement and signified its intention to seek arbitration over alleged contractual breaches by the BCDA.

In May 2012, the BCDA terminated the lease agreement, prompting CJHDevco to go to court.

On April 27, 2012, Baguio Judge Cleto Villacorta III issued a writ of preliminary injunction against the BCDA, stopping it from wresting control of the leased property. The CA ruling lifted this writ. Reports from Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon, and Jerome Aning in Manila