Posted by: Kristina M. Egnar on July 13, 2018
FACTS:
Private respondent Benjamin "Kokoy" Romualdez was charged with violations of Rep. Act No. 3019, or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, committed "on or about and during the period from 1976 to February 1986". However, the subject criminal cases were filed with the Sandiganbayan only on 5 November 2001, following a preliminary investigation that commenced only on 4 June 2001. The Information alleged that from 1976 to February 1986, Romualdez, then the Provincial Governor of the Province of Leyte, using his influence with his brother-in-law, then President Ferdinand E. Marcos, had himself appointed and/or assigned as Ambassador to foreign countries, particularly the People's Republic of China (Peking), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Jeddah), and United States of America (Washington D.C.), knowing fully well that such appointment and/or assignment is in violation of the existing laws as the Office of the Ambassador or Chief of Mission is incompatible with his position as Governor of the Province of Leyte, thereby enabling himself to collect dual compensation from both the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Provincial Government of Leyte to the damage and prejudice of the Government in the amount of P5,806,709.50.
Romualdez moved to quash the information on two grounds, namely: (1) that the facts alleged in the information do not constitute the offense with which the accused was charged; and (2) that the criminal action or liability has been extinguished by prescription.
The People opposed the motion to quash on the argument that Romualdez is misleading the court in asserting that Section 3 (e) of RA 3019 does not apply to him when Section 2 (b) of the law states that corrupt practices may be committed by public officers who include "elective and appointive officials and employees, permanent or temporary, whether in the classified or unclassified or exempt service receiving compensation, even nominal, from the government."8 On the issue of prescription, the People argued that Section 15, Article XI of the Constitution provides that the right of the State to recover properties unlawfully acquired by public officials or employees, from them or from their nominees or transferees, shall not be barred by prescription, laches or estoppel, and that prescription is a matter of technicality to which no one has a vested right. Romualdez filed a Reply to this Opposition
The People filed the present petition on the argument that the Sandiganbayan committed grave abuse of discretion in quashing the Information based on the reasons it stated in the assailed Resolutions, considering that:
A. Romualdez cannot be legally appointed as an ambassador of the Republic of the Philippines during his incumbency as Governor of the Province of Leyte; thus, to draw salaries for the two positions is to cause undue injury to the government under Section 3 (e) of RA 3019;
b. Romualdez cannot receive compensation for his illegal appointment as Ambassador of the Republic of the Philippines and for his services in this capacity; thus, to so pay him is to make illegal payment of public funds and cause undue injury to the government under Section 3 (e) of RA 3019; andcrarary
c. The Sandiganbayan went beyond the ultimate facts required in charging a violation of Section 3 (e) of RA 3019 and delved into matters yet to be proven during trial.
Required to comment on the petition, Romualdez filed a Motion to Dismiss with Comment Ad Cautelam. He argued that the filing of the present Rule 65 petition is improper, as a petition filed under Rule 45, instead of Rule 65, of the Revised Rules of Court is the proper remedy, considering that the assailed Resolutions are appealable. He cited in support of this contention the ruling that an order granting a motion to quash, unlike one of denial, is a final order; it is not merely interlocutory and is therefore immediately appealable.
ISSUE:
Whether or not the present petition may be given due course given the Rule 65 mode of review that the People used
HELD:
The Sandiganbayan ruling granting Romuldez' motion to quash the Information shall, upon finality, close and terminate the proceedings against Romuldez; hence, it is a final ruling that disposes of the case and is properly reviewable by appeal. Significantly, the People does not deny at all that the mode of review to question a Sandiganbayan final ruling is by way of Rule 45, as the above cited provision requires. It only posits that this requirement does not foreclose the use of a Rule 65 petition for certiorari premised on grave abuse of discretion when the issue is purely legal, when public interest is involved, or in case of urgency. In short, the People asks us to relax the application of the rules on the modes of review.
To put our discussions in perspective, we are not here primarily engaged in evaluating the motion to quash that Romualdez filed with the Sandiganbayan. Rather, we are evaluating - on the basis of the standards we have defined above - the propriety of the action of the Sandiganbayan in quashing the Information against Romualdez.
Based on these considerations, we hold that the Sandiganbayan's actions grossly violated the defined standards. Its conclusions are based on considerations that either not appropriate in evaluating a motion to quash; are evidentiary details not required to be stated in an Information; are matters of defense that have no place in an Information; or are statements amounting to rulings on the merits that a court cannot issue before trial.
To illustrate, in the first Resolution, the Sandiganbayan saw no basis for the allegation of damage and prejudice for the failure of the Information to state that Romualdez did not render service in the two positions which he occupied. The element of the offense material to the "damage and prejudice" that the Sandiganbayan refers to is the "undue injury" caused to the government by Romualdez' receipt of compensation for the incompatible positions that he could not simultaneously occupy. The allegation of "undue injury" in the Information, consisting of the extent of the injury and how it was caused, is complete. Beyond this allegation are matters that are already in excess of what a proper Information requires. To restate the rule, an Information only needs to state the ultimate facts constituting the offense, not the finer details of why and how the illegal acts alleged amounted to undue injury or damage - matters that are appropriate for the trial. Specifically, how the two positions of Romualdez were incompatible with each other and whether or not he can legally receive compensation for his two incompatible positions are matters of detail that the prosecution should adduce at the trial to flesh out the ultimate facts alleged in the Information. Whether or not compensation has been earned through proper and commensurate service is a matter in excess of the ultimate facts the Information requires and is one that Romualdez, not the Information, should invoke or introduce into the case as a matter of defense.
From another perspective, the Sandiganbayan's view that the Information should have alleged that services were not rendered assumes that Romualdez can occupy two government positions and can secure compensation from both positions if services were rendered. At the very least, these are legally erroneous assumptions that are contrary to what the then prevailing laws provided. Article XII (B), Section 4 of the 1973 Constitution provides that:
Unless otherwise provided by law, no elective official shall be eligible for appointment to any office or position during his tenure except as Member of the Cabinet.
On the other hand, Presidential Decree No. 807 Providing for the Organization of the Civil Service Commission states in its Section 44 that -
Limitation on Appointment. - No elective official shall be eligible for appointment to any office or position during his term of office.
On the matter of double compensation, the The purpose and occasion for the use of Rules 45 and 65 as modes of review are clearly established under the Rules of Court and related jurisprudence. Rule 45 provides for the broad process of appeal to the Supreme Court on pure errors of law committed by the lower court. Rule 65, on the other hand, provides a completely different basis for review through the extraordinary writ of certiorari . The writ is extraordinary because it solely addresses lower court actions rendered without or in excess of jurisdiction or with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack of jurisdiction. By express provision, Rule 65 is the proper remedy when there is no appeal or any other plain, speedy, and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law. Thus, the remedies of appeal and certiorari are mutually exclusive and not alternative or successive;certiorari is not allowed when a party to a case fails to appeal a judgment or final order despite the availability of that remedy; a petition for certiorari cannot likewise be a substitute for a lost appeal.
likewise has a specific provision - Article XV, Section 5 - which states:
SEC. 5. No elective or appointive public officer or employee shall receive additional or double compensation unless specifically authorized by law, nor accept, without the consent of the Batasang Pambansa, any present, emolument, office or title of any kind from any foreign state.
Neither the Sandiganbayan nor Romuladez has pointed to any law, and we are not aware of any such law, that would exempt Romualdez from the prohibition of the above-cited provisions.
In the context of ruling on a motion to quash, the allegation that services were not rendered that the Sandiganbayan wished to require, not being a fact material to the elements of the offense, is an extraneous matter that is inappropriate for the Sandiganbayan to consider for inclusion in the Information. That the Sandiganbayan has a fixation on this approach is patent from a reading of the second assailed Resolution when the Sandiganbayan, following the same line of thought, once more insisted that "receiving compensation is an incident of actual services rendered, hence it cannot be construed as injury or damage to the government." Thus again, the Sandiganbayan grossly erred in the same manner it did in the first Resolution.
For the Sandiganbayan to assume, too, and to conclude, that there was no damage and prejudice since there was no illegality in being compensated for actual services rendered, is to pass upon the merits of the case - a task premature for the Sandiganbayan to undertake at the motion-to-quash stage of the case. In so doing, the Sandiganbayan prematurely ruled on at least two matters. First, the Sandiganbayan either assumed as correct, or admitted for purposes of the motion to quash, the defense allegation that Romualdez rendered services, when this is a disputed evidentiary matter that can only be established at the trial. Second, and as already mentioned above, the legal status of the receipt of compensation for each of two incompatible offices is, at best, legally debatable. The Sandiganbayan repeated this premature ruling on the merits of the case in its subsequent statement in the first Resolution that "the accused may have been inefficient as a public officer by virtue of his holding of two concurrent positions, but such inefficiency is not enough to hold him criminally liable under the Information charged against him, given the elements of the crime and the standards set by the Supreme Court - At most, any liability arising from the holding of both positions by the accused may be administrative in nature."
Worse than the premature ruling it made in the above-quoted conclusion was the patent speculation that the Sandiganbayan undertook in considering "inefficiency" and arriving at its conclusion. Still much worse was its misreading of what a violation of Section 3(e), R.A. 3019 involves. Correctly understood, it is not the holding of two concurrent positions or the attendant efficiency in the handling of these positions, but the causing of undue injury to the government that is at the core of a Section 3(e) violation. The same misreading was evident when the Sandiganbayan stated in its second Resolution that "the accused cannot be held criminally liable, whether or not he had himself appointed to the position of the ambassador, while concurrently holding the position of provincial governor, because the act of appointment is something that can only be imputed to the appointing authority."
The Sandiganbayan fared no better and similarly gravely abused its discretion in the second Resolution when it concluded that that there could be no damage and prejudice to the government "in the absence of any contention that receipt of such was tantamount to giving unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference to any party and to acting with manifest partiality, evident bad faith or gross excusable negligence." That no allegation of "giving unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference to any party" appears in the Information is due obviously to the fact that this allegation is not necessary. "Giving a private party unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference" is not an element that must necessarily be alleged to complete the recital of how Section 3 (e) is violated because it is only one of two alternative modes of violating this provision, the other being causing "undue injury to any party, including the government." In short, the Information is complete solely on the basis of the "undue injury" allegation.
Even a cursory examination of the Information would show that an allegation of "evident bad faith" was expressly made, complete with a statement of how the bad faith was manifested, that is, "being then the elected Provincial Governor of Leyte and without abandoning such position, and using his influence with his brother-in-law, then President Ferdinand E. Marcos, [Romualdez] had himself appointed and/or assigned as Ambassador to foreign countries...". Whether this allegation can be successfully proven by evidence or established through an analysis of the nature of the power of appointment remains to be seen after trial, not at the motion-to-quash stage of the case. At this earlier stage, all that is required is for this allegation to be an ultimate fact directly providing for an element of the offense.
In light of all these, we conclude that the Sandiganbayan grossly and egregiously erred in the considerations it made and in the conclusions it arrived at when it quashed the Information against Romualdez, to the point of acting outside its jurisdiction through the grave abuse of discretion that attended its actions. Its errors are so patent and gross as to amount to action outside the contemplation of law. Thus, the declaration of the nullity of the assailed Sandiganbayan Resolutions is in order.
Thus, the court granted the petition and accordingly and annulled the Sandiganbayan's Resolutions dated 22 June 2004 and 23 November 2004 in CRIM. CASE NO. 26916 entitled People of the Philippines v. Benjamin "Kokoy" Romualdez. The Sandiganbayan was ordered to proceed with the trial on the merits of the case on the basis of the Information filed. Costs against the private respondent Benjamin "Kokoy" Romualdez.
DISTINCTION BETWEEN RULE 45 AND RULE 65:
The purpose and occasion for the use of Rules 45 and 65 as modes of review are clearly established under the Rules of Court and related jurisprudence. Rule 45 provides for the broad process of appeal to the Supreme Court on pure errors of law committed by the lower court. Rule 65, on the other hand, provides a completely different basis for review through the extraordinary writ of certiorari . The writ is extraordinary because it solely addresses lower court actions rendered without or in excess of jurisdiction or with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack of jurisdiction. By express provision, Rule 65 is the proper remedy when there is no appeal or any other plain, speedy, and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law. Thus, the remedies of appeal and certiorari are mutually exclusive and not alternative or successive;certiorari is not allowed when a party to a case fails to appeal a judgment or final order despite the availability of that remedy; a petition for certiorari cannot likewise be a substitute for a lost appeal.
FACTS:
Private respondent Benjamin "Kokoy" Romualdez was charged with violations of Rep. Act No. 3019, or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, committed "on or about and during the period from 1976 to February 1986". However, the subject criminal cases were filed with the Sandiganbayan only on 5 November 2001, following a preliminary investigation that commenced only on 4 June 2001. The Information alleged that from 1976 to February 1986, Romualdez, then the Provincial Governor of the Province of Leyte, using his influence with his brother-in-law, then President Ferdinand E. Marcos, had himself appointed and/or assigned as Ambassador to foreign countries, particularly the People's Republic of China (Peking), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Jeddah), and United States of America (Washington D.C.), knowing fully well that such appointment and/or assignment is in violation of the existing laws as the Office of the Ambassador or Chief of Mission is incompatible with his position as Governor of the Province of Leyte, thereby enabling himself to collect dual compensation from both the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Provincial Government of Leyte to the damage and prejudice of the Government in the amount of P5,806,709.50.
Romualdez moved to quash the information on two grounds, namely: (1) that the facts alleged in the information do not constitute the offense with which the accused was charged; and (2) that the criminal action or liability has been extinguished by prescription.
The People opposed the motion to quash on the argument that Romualdez is misleading the court in asserting that Section 3 (e) of RA 3019 does not apply to him when Section 2 (b) of the law states that corrupt practices may be committed by public officers who include "elective and appointive officials and employees, permanent or temporary, whether in the classified or unclassified or exempt service receiving compensation, even nominal, from the government."8 On the issue of prescription, the People argued that Section 15, Article XI of the Constitution provides that the right of the State to recover properties unlawfully acquired by public officials or employees, from them or from their nominees or transferees, shall not be barred by prescription, laches or estoppel, and that prescription is a matter of technicality to which no one has a vested right. Romualdez filed a Reply to this Opposition
The People filed the present petition on the argument that the Sandiganbayan committed grave abuse of discretion in quashing the Information based on the reasons it stated in the assailed Resolutions, considering that:
A. Romualdez cannot be legally appointed as an ambassador of the Republic of the Philippines during his incumbency as Governor of the Province of Leyte; thus, to draw salaries for the two positions is to cause undue injury to the government under Section 3 (e) of RA 3019;
b. Romualdez cannot receive compensation for his illegal appointment as Ambassador of the Republic of the Philippines and for his services in this capacity; thus, to so pay him is to make illegal payment of public funds and cause undue injury to the government under Section 3 (e) of RA 3019; andcrarary
c. The Sandiganbayan went beyond the ultimate facts required in charging a violation of Section 3 (e) of RA 3019 and delved into matters yet to be proven during trial.
Required to comment on the petition, Romualdez filed a Motion to Dismiss with Comment Ad Cautelam. He argued that the filing of the present Rule 65 petition is improper, as a petition filed under Rule 45, instead of Rule 65, of the Revised Rules of Court is the proper remedy, considering that the assailed Resolutions are appealable. He cited in support of this contention the ruling that an order granting a motion to quash, unlike one of denial, is a final order; it is not merely interlocutory and is therefore immediately appealable.
ISSUE:
Whether or not the present petition may be given due course given the Rule 65 mode of review that the People used
HELD:
The Sandiganbayan ruling granting Romuldez' motion to quash the Information shall, upon finality, close and terminate the proceedings against Romuldez; hence, it is a final ruling that disposes of the case and is properly reviewable by appeal. Significantly, the People does not deny at all that the mode of review to question a Sandiganbayan final ruling is by way of Rule 45, as the above cited provision requires. It only posits that this requirement does not foreclose the use of a Rule 65 petition for certiorari premised on grave abuse of discretion when the issue is purely legal, when public interest is involved, or in case of urgency. In short, the People asks us to relax the application of the rules on the modes of review.
To put our discussions in perspective, we are not here primarily engaged in evaluating the motion to quash that Romualdez filed with the Sandiganbayan. Rather, we are evaluating - on the basis of the standards we have defined above - the propriety of the action of the Sandiganbayan in quashing the Information against Romualdez.
Based on these considerations, we hold that the Sandiganbayan's actions grossly violated the defined standards. Its conclusions are based on considerations that either not appropriate in evaluating a motion to quash; are evidentiary details not required to be stated in an Information; are matters of defense that have no place in an Information; or are statements amounting to rulings on the merits that a court cannot issue before trial.
To illustrate, in the first Resolution, the Sandiganbayan saw no basis for the allegation of damage and prejudice for the failure of the Information to state that Romualdez did not render service in the two positions which he occupied. The element of the offense material to the "damage and prejudice" that the Sandiganbayan refers to is the "undue injury" caused to the government by Romualdez' receipt of compensation for the incompatible positions that he could not simultaneously occupy. The allegation of "undue injury" in the Information, consisting of the extent of the injury and how it was caused, is complete. Beyond this allegation are matters that are already in excess of what a proper Information requires. To restate the rule, an Information only needs to state the ultimate facts constituting the offense, not the finer details of why and how the illegal acts alleged amounted to undue injury or damage - matters that are appropriate for the trial. Specifically, how the two positions of Romualdez were incompatible with each other and whether or not he can legally receive compensation for his two incompatible positions are matters of detail that the prosecution should adduce at the trial to flesh out the ultimate facts alleged in the Information. Whether or not compensation has been earned through proper and commensurate service is a matter in excess of the ultimate facts the Information requires and is one that Romualdez, not the Information, should invoke or introduce into the case as a matter of defense.
From another perspective, the Sandiganbayan's view that the Information should have alleged that services were not rendered assumes that Romualdez can occupy two government positions and can secure compensation from both positions if services were rendered. At the very least, these are legally erroneous assumptions that are contrary to what the then prevailing laws provided. Article XII (B), Section 4 of the 1973 Constitution provides that:
Unless otherwise provided by law, no elective official shall be eligible for appointment to any office or position during his tenure except as Member of the Cabinet.
On the other hand, Presidential Decree No. 807 Providing for the Organization of the Civil Service Commission states in its Section 44 that -
Limitation on Appointment. - No elective official shall be eligible for appointment to any office or position during his term of office.
On the matter of double compensation, the The purpose and occasion for the use of Rules 45 and 65 as modes of review are clearly established under the Rules of Court and related jurisprudence. Rule 45 provides for the broad process of appeal to the Supreme Court on pure errors of law committed by the lower court. Rule 65, on the other hand, provides a completely different basis for review through the extraordinary writ of certiorari . The writ is extraordinary because it solely addresses lower court actions rendered without or in excess of jurisdiction or with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack of jurisdiction. By express provision, Rule 65 is the proper remedy when there is no appeal or any other plain, speedy, and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law. Thus, the remedies of appeal and certiorari are mutually exclusive and not alternative or successive;certiorari is not allowed when a party to a case fails to appeal a judgment or final order despite the availability of that remedy; a petition for certiorari cannot likewise be a substitute for a lost appeal.
likewise has a specific provision - Article XV, Section 5 - which states:
SEC. 5. No elective or appointive public officer or employee shall receive additional or double compensation unless specifically authorized by law, nor accept, without the consent of the Batasang Pambansa, any present, emolument, office or title of any kind from any foreign state.
Neither the Sandiganbayan nor Romuladez has pointed to any law, and we are not aware of any such law, that would exempt Romualdez from the prohibition of the above-cited provisions.
In the context of ruling on a motion to quash, the allegation that services were not rendered that the Sandiganbayan wished to require, not being a fact material to the elements of the offense, is an extraneous matter that is inappropriate for the Sandiganbayan to consider for inclusion in the Information. That the Sandiganbayan has a fixation on this approach is patent from a reading of the second assailed Resolution when the Sandiganbayan, following the same line of thought, once more insisted that "receiving compensation is an incident of actual services rendered, hence it cannot be construed as injury or damage to the government." Thus again, the Sandiganbayan grossly erred in the same manner it did in the first Resolution.
For the Sandiganbayan to assume, too, and to conclude, that there was no damage and prejudice since there was no illegality in being compensated for actual services rendered, is to pass upon the merits of the case - a task premature for the Sandiganbayan to undertake at the motion-to-quash stage of the case. In so doing, the Sandiganbayan prematurely ruled on at least two matters. First, the Sandiganbayan either assumed as correct, or admitted for purposes of the motion to quash, the defense allegation that Romualdez rendered services, when this is a disputed evidentiary matter that can only be established at the trial. Second, and as already mentioned above, the legal status of the receipt of compensation for each of two incompatible offices is, at best, legally debatable. The Sandiganbayan repeated this premature ruling on the merits of the case in its subsequent statement in the first Resolution that "the accused may have been inefficient as a public officer by virtue of his holding of two concurrent positions, but such inefficiency is not enough to hold him criminally liable under the Information charged against him, given the elements of the crime and the standards set by the Supreme Court - At most, any liability arising from the holding of both positions by the accused may be administrative in nature."
Worse than the premature ruling it made in the above-quoted conclusion was the patent speculation that the Sandiganbayan undertook in considering "inefficiency" and arriving at its conclusion. Still much worse was its misreading of what a violation of Section 3(e), R.A. 3019 involves. Correctly understood, it is not the holding of two concurrent positions or the attendant efficiency in the handling of these positions, but the causing of undue injury to the government that is at the core of a Section 3(e) violation. The same misreading was evident when the Sandiganbayan stated in its second Resolution that "the accused cannot be held criminally liable, whether or not he had himself appointed to the position of the ambassador, while concurrently holding the position of provincial governor, because the act of appointment is something that can only be imputed to the appointing authority."
The Sandiganbayan fared no better and similarly gravely abused its discretion in the second Resolution when it concluded that that there could be no damage and prejudice to the government "in the absence of any contention that receipt of such was tantamount to giving unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference to any party and to acting with manifest partiality, evident bad faith or gross excusable negligence." That no allegation of "giving unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference to any party" appears in the Information is due obviously to the fact that this allegation is not necessary. "Giving a private party unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference" is not an element that must necessarily be alleged to complete the recital of how Section 3 (e) is violated because it is only one of two alternative modes of violating this provision, the other being causing "undue injury to any party, including the government." In short, the Information is complete solely on the basis of the "undue injury" allegation.
Even a cursory examination of the Information would show that an allegation of "evident bad faith" was expressly made, complete with a statement of how the bad faith was manifested, that is, "being then the elected Provincial Governor of Leyte and without abandoning such position, and using his influence with his brother-in-law, then President Ferdinand E. Marcos, [Romualdez] had himself appointed and/or assigned as Ambassador to foreign countries...". Whether this allegation can be successfully proven by evidence or established through an analysis of the nature of the power of appointment remains to be seen after trial, not at the motion-to-quash stage of the case. At this earlier stage, all that is required is for this allegation to be an ultimate fact directly providing for an element of the offense.
In light of all these, we conclude that the Sandiganbayan grossly and egregiously erred in the considerations it made and in the conclusions it arrived at when it quashed the Information against Romualdez, to the point of acting outside its jurisdiction through the grave abuse of discretion that attended its actions. Its errors are so patent and gross as to amount to action outside the contemplation of law. Thus, the declaration of the nullity of the assailed Sandiganbayan Resolutions is in order.
Thus, the court granted the petition and accordingly and annulled the Sandiganbayan's Resolutions dated 22 June 2004 and 23 November 2004 in CRIM. CASE NO. 26916 entitled People of the Philippines v. Benjamin "Kokoy" Romualdez. The Sandiganbayan was ordered to proceed with the trial on the merits of the case on the basis of the Information filed. Costs against the private respondent Benjamin "Kokoy" Romualdez.
DISTINCTION BETWEEN RULE 45 AND RULE 65:
The purpose and occasion for the use of Rules 45 and 65 as modes of review are clearly established under the Rules of Court and related jurisprudence. Rule 45 provides for the broad process of appeal to the Supreme Court on pure errors of law committed by the lower court. Rule 65, on the other hand, provides a completely different basis for review through the extraordinary writ of certiorari . The writ is extraordinary because it solely addresses lower court actions rendered without or in excess of jurisdiction or with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack of jurisdiction. By express provision, Rule 65 is the proper remedy when there is no appeal or any other plain, speedy, and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law. Thus, the remedies of appeal and certiorari are mutually exclusive and not alternative or successive;certiorari is not allowed when a party to a case fails to appeal a judgment or final order despite the availability of that remedy; a petition for certiorari cannot likewise be a substitute for a lost appeal.
