BLANZA VS ARCANGEL

Facts:
1. On April, 1955, Atty. Arcangel volunteered to help them in their respective pension
claims in connection with the death of their husbands, both P.C. soldiers.
a. They handed Arcangel pertinent documents and also affixed their signatures on blank
papers.
b. After which, they noticed that respondent lost interest and no progress was made.
After 6 years they finally asked respondent to return the said documents but the latter
refused.
c. Upon questioning by Fiscal Rana to whom the case was referred by the Solicitor
General respondent admitted having received the documents but explained that it was
for photostating purposes only.
d. His failure to immediately return them was due to complainants’ refusal to hand him
money to pay for the photostating costs which prevented him from withdrawing the
documents.
e. Anyway, he had already advanced the expenses himself and turned over the
documents to the fiscal.
2. Fiscal found respondents explanation satisfactory and recommended the respondents
exoneration.
a. However, Sol Gen feels that respondent deserves at least a severe reprimand
considering:
1) his failure to attend to complainants pension claims for 6 years;
2) his failure to immediately return the documents despite repeated demands upon him, and
3) his failure to return to complainant Pasion, allegedly all of her documents.
Issue: WON Atty. Arcangel is guilty of professional non-feasance
Held: No.
1. Respondent’s explanation for the delay in filing the claims in returning the documents
has not been controverted by complainants.
2. On the contrary, they admitted that respondent asked them to shoulder the photostating
expenses but they did not give him any money. Hence, complainants are partly to
blame.
3. Moreover, the documents and their photostats were actually returned by respondent
during the fiscal’s investigation with him paying for the photostating costs himself.
4. As for the alleged failure of the respondent to all her documents to complainant Pasion,
the former denies this. the affidavit of Mrs. Blanza pardoning respondent cannot
prejudice complainant Pasion because res inter alios acta alteri nocere non debet.

Salcedo vs. Hernandez [G.R. No. L-42992. August 8, 1935]

16 Oct

Ponente: DIAZ, J.
FACTS:

Attorney Vicente Francisco, representing the petitioner-appellant, inserted alleged contemptuous

paragraph in his motion for reconsideration read as follows:

We should like frankly and respectfully to make it of record that the resolution of this court,
denying our motion for reconsideration, is absolutely erroneous and constitutes an outrage to the
rights of the petitioner Felipe Salcedo and a mockery of the popular will expressed at the polls in
the municipality of Tiaong, Tayabas. We wish to exhaust all the means within out power in order
that this error may be corrected by the very court which has committed it, because we should not
want that some citizen, particularly some voter of the municipality of Tiaong, Tayabas, resort to
the press publicly to denounce, as he has a right to do, the judicial outrage of which the herein
petitioner has been the victim, and because it is our utmost desire to safeguard the prestige of this
honorable court and of each and every member thereof in the eyes of the public. But, at the same
time we wish to state sincerely that erroneous decisions like these, which the affected party and
his thousands of voters will necessarily consider unjust, increase the proselytes of “sakdalism”
and make the public lose confidence in the administration of justice.

The court required him to show cause, if any, why he should not be found guilty of contempt,
giving him a period of ten days for that purpose. In his answer Atty. Francisco, far from
regretting having employed the phrases contained in said paragraph in his motion, reiterated
them several times contending that they did not constitute contempt because, according to him it
is not contempt to tell the truth.

ISSUE:

Whether or not respondent-appellee is guilty of contempt.

HELD:

YES. Atty. Francisco ordered to pay a fine of P200.00 in ten days and reprimanded.

RATIO:

As a member of the bar and an officer of this court, Attorney Vicente J. Francisco, as any
attorney, is in duty bound to uphold its dignity and authority and to defend its integrity, not only
because it has conferred upon him the high privilege, not right (Malcolm, Legal Ethics, 158 and
160), of being what he now is.

It is right and plausible that an attorney, in defending the cause and rights of his client, should do
so with all the fervor and energy of which he is capable, but it is not, and never will be so for him
to exercise said right by resorting to intimidation or proceeding without the propriety and respect
which the dignity of the courts require. The reason for this is that respect of the courts guarantees
the stability of their institution. Without such guarranty, said institution would be resting on a
very shaky foundation.