2 lawyers seek Sereno accuser’s disbarment

Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno INQUIRER PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

Two lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to act on the disbarment case they lodged in 2016 against fellow lawyer Lorenzo Gadon.

Gadon recently hogged the limelight for filing one of the two impeachment complaints against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.

Lawyers Algamar Latiph and Musa Malayang wrote Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, chair of the high court’s Second Division, to remind the justice that their complaint seeking to drop Gadon from the country’s roll of attorneys has been unresolved since April 2016.

“To date, we have not received any comment from the respondent; or whether the case is submitted for resolution in view of the respondent’s failure to file a comment, assuming that he was duly served with a copy of the complaint,” Latiph and Malayang said in their letter dated Aug. 8, 2017, a copy of which was obtained by the media only yesterday.

The pair had sought Gadon’s disbarment for allegedly threatening to kill the residents of Mindanao, including women and children, just to bring peace in the strife-torn region.

He issued the controversial remarks in two separate television interviews during the campaign period last year.

Gadon, a staunch supporter of President Duterte, lost badly in the last senatorial race. He ran under the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, the political party founded by the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos.

Sought for comment, Gadon said he was not aware that Latiph and Malayang had brought a disbarment complaint against him, dismissing it as “just a nuisance case.”

“At any rate, I am a friend of the Muslims now. I even got more votes than the other Muslim candidates in Mindanao,” Gadon claimed.

Gadon accused Sereno of failing to declare P37 million in lawyer’s fees she allegedly earned as government counsel in an arbitration case, among other allegations he raised against the chief justice.

In her rejoinder, Sereno said that Gadon failed to debunk her rebuttals. For instance, she said, Gadon failed to provide any evidence of her alleged failure to disclose the attorney’s fees in her statements of assets, liabilities and net worth from 2003 to 2008.