By Benjamin B. Pulta
Tribune
A ruling by the Court of Appeals (CA) has given the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) the green light to evict several retired military personnel and their families from the Villamor Airmen’s Village (VAV), in Pasay City.
In a 16-page ruling by Associate Justice Mariflor Punzalan Castillo, the CA’s Fourth Division granted the petition filed by the BCDA seeking to annul and set aside the orders issued by the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Pasay City which denied its motion to dismiss and dissolve the writ of preliminary injunction.
Concurring with the ruling were Associate Justices Josefina Guevara-Salonga and Franchito Diamante.
The Pasay RTC issued the writ of preliminary injunction enjoining the BCDA, the National Housing Authority (NHA), the Local Government of Pasay City (LGPC) and the Department of National Defense (DND) from evicting and padlocking the quarters of the concerned retired military personnel who are among the 192 families occupying the residential housing quarters located within that village.
The appellate court held that the trial court committed grave abuse of discretion in issuing the said orders considering that the issue involving the eviction of retired military personnel had already been settled in the first case for ejectment in civil case 799-99.
Such ruling, according to the CA, constitutes a bar to the litigation of subsequent suits, including the petition for declaratory relief that was filed by the retired military personnel.
The CA further noted that the parties in the ejectment case and the declaratory relief cases are the same.
“We are convinced that a finding in the declaratory relief case that the private respondents herein may not be evicted from the subject premises would be plainly inconsistent with the finding in the ejectment case that they are not entitled to the material possession of the residential units in question pursuant to the contract of occupancy they had executed,†the CA ruled.
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