By Rey Panaligan

The Court of Appeals (CA) had denied the motion to reconsider its dismissal last year of the petition filed by the so-called human rights victims during administration of the late former president Ferdinand E. Marcos to enforce a final ruling of a United States court awarding them about US$2 billion in damages.

In a resolution written by Associate Justice Normandie Pizarro, the CA ruled that there was no new or substantial matter raised in the motion that would warrant a reversal or modification on July 7, 2017 decision.

In its 2017 decision, the CA said the ruling handed down by the Hawaii District Court in 1995 is not binding because the said US court had no jurisdiction as the right to due process of all the unnamed claimants, as well as the respondent Marcos estate, had been violated.

“To our minds, the failure of the final judgment to meet the standards of what a valid judgment is in our country compels us to deny its enforcement,” the CA said.

“Rules of comity should not be made to prevail over our Constitution and we cannot allow foreign impositions to trample upon our sovereignty,” it stressed.

With the decision, the CA affirmed the ruling handed down by the Makati City regional trial court (RTC) which dismissed the complaint for recognition and enforcement of a foreign judgment filed by Priscilla Mijares, Loretta Ann Rosales, Hilda Narciso Sr., Mariani Dimaranan and Joel Lamangan in their behalf and on behalf of the class plaintiffs in US case, Class Action No. MDL 840, consisting of approximately 10,000 human rights victims during the Marcos regime.

The CA said that the Hawaii District Court certified MDL 840 as a class suit, which should mean that the parties who filed the case both for themselves and those they seek to represent share a common legal interest – “that is, the subject of the suit over which there exists a cause of action is common to all persons who belong to the group.”

But it noted that in final judgment of the Hawaii court and sought to be enforced the Philippines, the purported claimants were classified into three subclasses – torture, summary execution and disappearance victims.

It pointed out that such classification of the claimants is an obvious recognition that “no common question of law and fact exists between/among the claimants.”

“In other words, each claimant in MDL 840 had a right, if any, only to the damage that such individual may have suffered, and not one of them had any right to or can claim any interest in

“Hence, MDL 840 was not and should not have been brought as a class suit.