12,000 cases swamp 43 public counsels

THE Public Attorney’s Office in Quezon City is groaning under the weight of a heavy case load, with 43 lawyers each handling an average of 300 cases.

Despite this, the consolidated report of the district office showed that the agency serving poor litigants was able to win a respectable number of suits.

In an interview, regional chief Diosdado Savellano said he had 43 lawyers in his staff, including himself, that cover not only criminal cases, but civil cases as well, along with those in administrative bodies like the National Labor Relations Commission and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board.

“Two of our lawyers would be leaving us this month; one was appointed as a fiscal while the other would return to private practice,” he said.

Savellano said PAO took on cases before 58 QC courts, five divisions of the Sandiganbayan and 22 NLRC arbiters.

“That does not include cases in other bodies like the PLEB [People’s Law Enforcement Board].”

Savellano said lawyers managed to attend to every case only because the court processes were quite slow.

He said it would ease their load a lot if they could hire one lawyer for each of the regular courts and the special courts in the city.

“I mentioned our problem to [PAO] chief [Persida Rueda] Acosta and she said she would do something about it,” Savellano said.

In its performance report, the office received 792 cases in June alone, on top of 10,211 pending under its responsibility, or a total of 10,698 cases.

The report showed that from January to June this year, PAO-QC has secured 570 decisions favorable to its clients, out of a total 809 cases with 69 acquittals and 93 civil cases won; the rest involved motions.

For the same period, 46 court decisions were against clients, with 27 cases ending in conviction, 18 civil cases lost and an administrative case dismissed. –Roy Pelovello, Manila Standard Today