THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLANT, VS. VENANCIO H. AQUINO, DEFENDANT-APPELLEE, THOMAS M. GONZALES, INTERVENOR.

Stating that it involves
questions purely of law, the Court of Appeals certified this appeal to Us.

The prosecution at bar is for
libel. An information, dated March
29, 1963,
was filed in the Court of First Instance of Cagayan
against Venancio H. Aquino,
alleging:

“That on or about
July 27,
1960, in
the Municipality of Camalaniugan,
Province of Cagayan, and within the jurisdiction of
this Court, the said accused Venancio H. Aquino, being the counsel for Demetrio B. Encarnacion in Civil
Case No. [N-] 151, for ‘Damages for Libel’ in the Court of First Instance of
Cavite, 7th Judicial District, Branch III, did then
and there wilfully, unlawfully and feloniously and
with malicious intent of impeaching the personal worth, integrity, honor and
reputation of the complaining witness Thomas M, Gonzales, circulate and publish
and/or caused to be circulated and published his ‘Reply and Answer to
Counterclaim’ a copy of which was furnished and received by the counsel of the
complaining witness Thomas M. Gonzales at Camalaniugan, Cagayan, on July 27,
1960, which the accused wrote, prepared and mailed and/or caused to be written,
prepared and mailed, containing highly libelous, derogatory and scurrilous words
and expressions among which are the following:

‘To this, our applicable reply
are the very words of the Honorable Supreme Court to a party for shamelessly
making untrue, libelous statements, to wit: ‘(This party) appears to belong to
the-class of individuals who have no compunction to resort to falsehood or
falsehoods, x x x as part of
their systematic campaign of falsehoods, and slanders directed against us, is an
imposture that only ignorants, blackhands and other mental pachyderms (like him) can
swallow.” ‘x x x

Defendant was the impertinent
assaulter of plaintiff’s reputation, the malefactor who concocted the
preposterous and malicious insinuations against the
plaintiff, so that, defendant has no feelings, if at all, to be
wounded;’

knowing fully well that the
aforesaid words and phrases to be inapplicable to and inappropriate for the
pleading of which they are made integral parts, and knowing likewise the same to
be immaterial, impertinent and irrelevant to the issues involved in the
aforementioned civil case, thus publicly and maliciously exposing the
complaining witness Thomas M. Gonzales to public ridicule, derision, mockery,
scorn and contempt to the irreparable damage and prejudice of the said
complaining witness Thomas M. Gonzales whom the aforequoted words and phrases were applied and referred
to.”

Aquino filed a motion to quash or amend
the information, upon the ground that it was not sufficiently intelligible. Said
motion was denied by the court.

Subsequently, however, on
September 28, 1963, Aquino filed a second motion to
quash, claiming that (1) the statements referred to are not defamatory; and (2)
the statements, even if defamatory, are absolutely privileged. Annexed thereto
were copies of the Complaint, Answer with Counterclaim, and the Reply and Answer
to the Counterclaim, in Civil Case No. N-151 of the Court of
First Instance of Cavite.

After the Assistant Fiscal filed
an answer to the motion, the court a quo, on October 15,
1963,
dismissed the case, upon the second ground of the motion to quash. Thus it ruled
that the statements of the accused in the “Reply and Answer to the Counterclaim”
filed in Civil Case No. N-151 constituted absolutely privileged matters, having
been made in the course of judicial proceedings and being relevant to the issues
that arose in that afore-stated case.

From the order of dismissal –
there was yet no arraignment and plea – the prosecution has
appealed.

Appellant, through the Solicitor
General, recognized the rule, as laid down in several decisions of this Court,
that statements made in the course of judicial proceedings are absolutely
privileged – that is, privileged regardless of defamatory tenor and of the
presence of malice – if the same are relevant, pertinent or material to the
cause in hand or subject of the inquiry. And that, in view of this, the person
who makes them – such as a judge, lawyer or witness – does not thereby incur the
risk of being found liable thereon in a criminal prosecution or an action for
the recovery of damages.^[*] At issue here is the
application of said rule, or whether the statements of Aquino, quoted in the information, fall within the scope of
this privilege.

As shown in the records before
Us, the suit known as Civil Case No. N-151 was filed by
Ex-Judge Demetrio Encarnacion against Thomas Gonzales, to recover damages for
allegedly false, malicious and libelous statements contained in the defendant’s
letter to his (defendant’s) sister, dated September 3,
1958, shown and given to plaintiff in July of 1959, imputing that plaintiff had
been “separated from the position of Judge of the Court of First Instance by
reason of his supposedly dirty and indecent ways of dispensing human justice and
of his (plaintiff’s) having been leading an immoral life.” (Plaintiff’s Complaint, par. 3, Annex A to Second Motion to
Quash.)

To plaintiff’s Complaint alleging
the above matters, Thomas Gonzales filed an Answer with Counterclaim, putting up
the defense that the letter referred to “was addressed to defendant’s sister,
Mrs. Magdalena G. Manikan, mailed in a sealed envelope
to her, and written with the sincere desire to comply with an obligation, social
and moral, and with the honest belief in the truthfulness of the statements
contained therein”; and that “reference to the complainant, if any, was merely
incidental, devoid of any intent to libel”. Thus, defendant further asked for
P25,000 in moral damages, alleging that “by the
unwarranted filing by the plaintiff, in bad faith, of the aforesaid malicious
and unfounded charges against the defendant, the latter suffered mental anguish,
serious anxiety, wounded feelings and moral shock”. (Defendant’s Answer with Counterclaim, pp. 1-2, Annex B to Second
Motion to Quash.)

Then followed plaintiff’s Reply
and Answer to the Counterclaim, filed through counsel
Venancio H. Aquino,
containing among others, the allegations subject matter of the present criminal
action. For convenience, said allegations are hereunder again quoted:

“To this, our applicable Reply
are the very words of our Honorable Supreme Court to a party for shamelessly
making untrue, libelous statements, to wit: ‘(This party) appears to belong to
the class of individuals who have no compunction to resort to falsehood or
falsehoods x x x as part of
their systematic campaign of falsehood, and slanders directed against us, is an
imposture that only ignorants, blackhands and other mental pachyderms (like him) can
swallow.’ “x x x

defendant was the impertinent assaulter of
plaintiff’s reputation, the malefactor who concocted the preposterous and malicious insinuations against the plaintiff, so that,
defendant has no feelings, if at all, to be wounded;”

From the
pleadings thus filed in Civil Case No. N-151, the subject of inquiry
readily discernible is whether the defendant acted out of sheer malice with
intent to cast dishonor upon the plaintiff; or in good faith, pursuing a sense
of social or moral duty. Since the plaintiff asserted the first proposition, the
allegations in his Reply and Answer to Counterclaim to the effect that
defendant’s posture of innocence was a shameless pretense – strongly or
offensively worded though it may be – are pertinent and related to the subject
of inquiry. Thus, in quoting from the opinion of Justice Perfecto in the Sotto
case,^[*] said pleading may indeed
have thereby called the defendant “an imposture that only ignorant, blackhands and other mental pachyderms (like him) can
swallow.” Yet this was responsive to defendant’s allegations to the contrary,
and pertained to the subject of inquiry. The same is true with the assertion
that defendant “was the impertinent assaulter of plaintiff’s reputation, the
malefactor who concocted the preposterous and malicious insinuations against the
plaintiff, so that, defendant has no feelings, if at all, to be
wounded.”

Appellant’s brief would however
dissect the quotation and separately analyze such terms as “blackhands” and “pachyderms”. It is argued that these are
words having no bearing to the cause; that “black hand” according to Webster’s
New International Dictionary means “a lawless secret society practising terrorism, extortion or other crimes” and
“pachyderm” means “thick-skinned”; and that appellant cannot conceive of any
situation whereby during the trial of the civil case the defendant might be
proved to be a “pachyderm” or a ‘blackhand” or even an
“imposture” or “ignorant” as these terms are used in the expressions in
question.

First of all, in this regard it
is the rule that what is relevant or pertinent should be liberally considered to
favor the writer, and the words are not to be scrutinized with microscopic
intensity.^[*] Secondly, there is no such
word as “blackhand“; Webster’s New International
Dictionary gives “Black Hand” meaning, what the Solicitor General gave to “blackhand,” that is, a lawless secret society whose members
engage in extortion, terrorism, and other crimes. A person belonging to or
associated with said society is not called “blackhand”
-as stated, there is no such term – but “blackhander”
(See, Webster, New International Dictionary, 2nd Ed., p. 280; Eric Partridge, A
Dictionary of the Underworld, [1950] p. 44.)

Now, We
discussed this here because there was an obvious clerical error in the pleading
in quoting from Justice Perfecto, who used not “blackhand” but “blockhead” in the portion quoted. Since
there is no such word as “blackhand” (referring to an
individual), and since reference to the quotation from Justice Perfecto is made,
the term used must be deemed, for our purposes, “blockhead”. And “blockhead”
means “a person deficient in understanding” (Webster, Ibid., p.
290).

As to the word “pachyderm,” the
same was qualified by the word “mental” so that it does not refer to thickness
of the physical skin. As appellee’s brief points out,
“mental pachyderm” refers to a “distorted mind, a mind that is insensible,
unfeeling, senseless, hardened, callous (Thesaurus of Words and Phrases, par.
376, p. 121, copyright 1947).”^[*]

It will thus be seen that whether
or not the defendant is so deficient in knowledge (“ignorant”) and understanding
(“blockhead”) and possessed of an insensible, unfeeling and hardened mind, as to
indulge in a pretense of the kind that he is alleged to have made in his Answer
with Counterclaim, is a question that reasonably pertains to the subject of
inquiry in the civil case, namely, whether his claim of good faith in mentioning
things defamatory to plaintiff is an imposture or a truth.

As such, the allegations
complained of herein cannot give rise to criminal or civil liability against the
advocate who made them. As this Court observed in Sison v. David, L-11268, January 28, 1961: “x x
x

The privilege is not intended so
much for the protection of those engaged in the public service and in the
enactment and administration of law, as for the promotion of the public welfare,
the purpose being that members of the legislature, judges of courts, jurors,
lawyers, and witnesses may speak their minds freely and exercise their
respective functions without incurring the risk of a criminal prosecution or an
action for the recovery of damages. (33 Am. Jur.,
123-124.)”

Stated otherwise, the privilege
is granted in aid and for the advantage of the administration of justice. Since
it appears from the information that the allegations complained of herein are
contained in an appropriate pleading, and since they pass the test of relevancy,
it was no error for the court ji quo to sustain the
privilege and to quash the information upon defendant’s motion (People v.
Andres, G.R. No. L-14548, April 29,
1960).

WHEREFORE, the order appealed from
quashing the information in this case is hereby affirmed, with costs de oficio.

SO
ORDERED.

Concepcion, C.J., Dizon, Regala, Makalintal, Zaldivar, Sanchez
and Ruiz Castro, JJ.,
concur.

 Reyes, J., reserves his
vote.

 Barrera, J., on leave.

^[*]
U.S. v. Bustos, 37 Phil. 743; Tupas v.
Parreño, G.R. No. L-12545,
April 30,
1959; People v. Andres, L-14548,
April 29,
1960; Sison
v. David, G.R. No. L-11268,
January 28,
1961; Tolentino v. Baylosis, G.R.
No. L-15742, January 31,
1961; Gonzales v. Alvarez, G.R.
No. L-19072,
August 14,
1965.

^[*] 82 Phil. 595, 607,
618.

^[*]
U.S. v. Bustos, 37 Phil. 731, 743; Smith Bell & Co. v. Ellis, 48
Phil. 475, 482.

^[*] Appellee’s brief, p. 27.