G.R. No. 159302 ; August 22, 2008
CITIBANK, N.A., petitioner, vs. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS COMMISSION and ROSITA TAN PARAGAS, respondents.

FACTS

Respondent Rosita Tan Paragas filed a Motion for Leave to Admit her attached Second Motion for Reconsideration. She claimed she only learned of the Supreme Court’s April 23, 2008 Resolution, which denied her first motion for reconsideration, on July 9, 2008, after inquiring with the Court. She admitted the notice may have been sent to her counsel of record, the Law Firm of M.M. Lazaro & Associates, with whom she had lost communication. She explained the counsel handled her case pro bono and she found it difficult to formally dismiss the services due to a “debt of gratitude.”
Records showed the notice of the April 23 Resolution was received by her counsel on June 5, 2008. Paragas filed her Motion for Leave and Second Motion for Reconsideration on July 24, 2008. In her motions, she argued for the suspension of procedural rules to allow a second motion for reconsideration, citing the Court’s past grant of petitioner Citibank’s own second motion. She raised procedural and substantive points, including that Citibank’s petition was previously denied with finality, her retirement claim was in her position paper, and that no findings of serious misconduct were made against her.

ISSUE

Whether the Supreme Court should grant respondent Paragas’s Motion for Leave to Admit and her Second Motion for Reconsideration.

RULING

The Supreme Court denied the motions. On procedure, the Court ruled that notice to counsel is notice to the client. Since Paragas’s counsel of record received the notice on June 5, 2008, and no formal withdrawal or substitution of counsel was filed, the reglementary period began from that date. Consequently, her motions filed on July 24, 2008, were filed out of time.
Substantively, the Court found her motions devoid of merit. While the prohibition against a second motion for reconsideration is not absolute and may be lifted for extraordinarily persuasive reasons in the interest of justice—as was done for petitioner Citibank—Paragas failed to show any such reason. Her procedural arguments (that Citibank’s petition was previously denied and that its counsel initially failed to indicate an Attorney’s Roll Number) had already been addressed and resolved by the Court in its prior Resolution granting Citibank’s second motion. The Roll Number requirement is directory, not a ground for dismissal. Her substantive arguments regarding her retirement benefits and the absence of misconduct findings were extensively discussed and resolved in the main Decision. Therefore, no compelling reason existed to justify a departure from the general rule prohibiting a second motion for reconsideration.