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G.R. No. 126466 January 14, 1999
ARTURO BORJAL a.k.a. ART BORJAL and MAXIMO SOLIVEN,
petitioners,vs.COURT OF APPEALS and FRANCISCO WENCESLAO,
respondents.
Facts :
A series of articles written by petitioner Borjal was published
on different dates in his column Jaywalker. The articles dealt with
the alleged
anomalous activities of an "organizer of a conference" without
naming or identifying private respondent. Neither did it refer to
the (First National
Conference on Land Transportation) FNCLT as the conference
therein mentioned. Thereafter, private respondent filed a complaint
with the National Press
Club (NPC) against petitioner Borjal for unethical conduct. He
accused petitioner Borjal of using his column as a form of leverage
to obtain contracts for his public
relations firm, AA Borjal Associates.Apparently not satisfied
with his complaint with the NPC, private respondent filed a
criminal case for libel against petitioners
Borjal and Soliven, among others. The court ruled in favor of
the defendants which the CA affirmed. The petitioners moved for
motion for reconsideration but was
subsequently denied.
Issue:
Whether CA erred in (1) in ruling that the questioned articles
lost their privileged character because of their publication in a
newspaper of general circulation; (2) in
ruling that private respondent has a valid cause of action for
libel against petitioners although he failed to prove actual malice
on their part, and that the
prosecutors of the City of Manila, the Department of Justice,
and eventually, the Office of the President, had already resolved
that there was no sufficient evidence
to prove the existence of libel;
Held:
The petition was granted. Decision of CA denying motion for
reconsideration are REVERSED and SET
ASIDE.
A privileged communication may be either absolutely privileged
or qualifiedly privileged. Absolutely privileged communications are
those which are not actionableeven if the author has acted in bad
faith. An example is found in Sec. 11, Art.VI, o f the 1987
Constitution which exempts a member of Congress from liability
forany speech or debate in the Congress or in any Committee
thereof. Upon the other hand, qualifiedly privileged communications
containing defamatory imputationsare not actionable unless found to
have been made without good intention justifiable motive. To this
genre belong "private communications" and "fair and truereport
without any comments or remarks."
The Court of Appeals concluded that since malice is always
presumed in the publication of defamatory matters in the absence of
proof to the contrary, the questionof privilege is immaterial.
Malice connotes ill will or spite and speaks not in response to
duty but merely to injure the reputation of the person defamed, and
implies an intention to do ulterior
and unjustifiable harm.34Malice is bad faith or bad motive. 35It
is the essence of the crime of libel.
Primarily, private respondent failed to substantiate by
preponderant evidence that petitioner was animated by a desire to
inflict unjustifiable harmon his reputation,or that the articles
were written and published without good motives or justifiable ends
. On the other hand, we find petitioner Borjal to have acted in
good faith.Moved by a sense of civic duty and prodded by his
responsibility as a newspaperman, he proceeded to expose and
denounce what he perceived to be a publicdeception. Surely, we
cannot begrudge him for that. Every citizen has the right to enjoy
a good name and reputation, but we do not consider that petitioner
Borjalhas violated that right in this case nor abused his press
freedom.
Furthermore, to be considered malicious, the libelous statements
must be shown to have been written or published with the knowledge
that they are false or inreckless disregard of whether they are
false or not. 37"Reckless disregard of what is false or not" means
that the defendant entertains serious doubt as to the truthof the
publication,38or that he possesses a high degree of awareness of
their probable falsity.3
