G.R. No. 142947. March 19, 2002.
FRANCISCO N. VILLANUEVA, JR., petitioner, vs. THE HON. COURT OF APPEALS and ROQUE VILLADORES, respondents.

FACTS

Petitioner Francisco Villanueva, Jr. was the complainant in a labor case against IBC 13. IBC 13 appealed the adverse decision by posting a surety bond, which was later discovered to be falsified. Consequently, criminal cases for Falsification of Public Document were filed. Initially, respondent Roque Villadores was excluded, but the Department of Justice later ordered his inclusion as an accused. The trial court subsequently admitted amended informations that included Villanueva as the offended party claiming damages. Villadores challenged this inclusion via a petition for certiorari (CA-G.R. SP No. 46103), which the Court of Appeals dismissed, finding no grave abuse of discretion by the trial court. However, in that decision, the appellate court made an incidental pronouncement that Villanueva was not the offended party, as the falsified bond was secured by IBC 13 and any prejudice would have been to IBC, not to Villanueva.
Subsequently, before the trial court, Villadores filed a motion to disqualify the private prosecutor, Rico and Associates, representing Villanueva, citing the appellate court’s pronouncement. The trial court denied the motion, ruling that the pronouncement was a mere obiter dictum and thus not binding. Villadores then filed another petition for certiorari (CA-G.R. SP No. 50235) challenging the trial court’s orders.

ISSUE

Whether the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. SP No. 50235 erred in reversing the trial court and ordering the disqualification of the private prosecutor and the removal of Villanueva as the offended party based on its earlier pronouncement.

RULING

The Supreme Court denied Villanueva’s petition and affirmed the Court of Appeals’ decision. The legal logic is clear: the earlier pronouncement by the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. SP No. 46103, which stated that Villanueva was not the offended party, was not a mere obiter dictum but a necessary conclusion integral to the resolution of the issue in that case. The appellate court had to determine whether the trial court committed grave abuse of discretion in admitting the amended informations. In making that determination, it necessarily examined the substantive issue of whether Villanueva could be considered a prejudiced party. Its finding that he was not the offended party was a fundamental premise for its ultimate ruling that the trial court did not commit grave abuse of discretion, as an error of judgment is not correctible by certiorari. Therefore, this pronouncement had a direct bearing on the case’s outcome and constituted part of the court’s ratio decidendi. Consequently, the trial court in the subsequent disqualification proceeding was bound by this final and executory finding. Since Villanueva was judicially declared not to be the offended party, he had no legal right to intervene through a private prosecutor in the criminal cases for falsification.