Article by:
Benjamin Pulta
MANILA – The Court of Appeals (CA) upheld the decision of a local court ordering a woman from Pampanga to settle with a bank her PHP3.34 million credit card debts.
In a decision, the CA Fourteenth Division affirmed Eliza Lazo must pay BDO Unibank PHP2.788 million plus interest computed from October 2015 as well as the cost of the suit, noting that the defendant has an “apparent penchant for disregarding court orders”.
Lazo filed an omnibus motion to cross examine the lone witness presented by BDO but the CA said she did not attend the pre-trial scheduled six times by the Makati Regional Trial Court (RTC).
“The Court finds that the latter is clearly not entitled to any further relaxation of the procedural rules. We find that the RTC had already more than relaxed the rules for Lazo,” the CA said.
Lazo claimed she was never furnished by BDO a copy of the application forms and that when she applied for the said credit cards, she was merely instructed to sign the forms without explanation about the terms and conditions.
She also argued that the contract containing the terms and conditions of her credit cards can be considered contracts of adhesion (one party has substantially more power than the other), which must be declared void.
Lazo said the statements of account that BDO attached to its complaint were incomplete and the greater bulk of the amounts indicated were finance charges which BDO did not bother to explain in relation to her principal account, in violation of Republic Act (RA) No. 3765 or the Truth in Lending Act.
RA 3765 states that “it is the policy of the State to protect its citizens from a lack of awareness of the true cost of credit to the user by assuring a full disclosure of such cost with a view of preventing the uninformed use of credit to the detriment of the national economy”.
After failing to attend the hearings in the lower court multiple times, the woman took the case to the CA, claiming the Makati court had violated her right to due process.
"Indeed, the relaxation of procedural rules in the interest of justice was never intended to be a license for erring litigants to violate the rules with impunity. While litigation is not a game of technicalities, every case must still be prosecuted in accordance with the prescribed procedure in order to ensure an orderly and speedy administration of justice," the CA ruled. (PNA)
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