by Miriam G. Desacada
Ormoc City–The Regional Trial Court in Palompon, Leyte had granted the DBSN Farms’ motion for the issuance of a writ of preliminary attachment against case defendants, former mayor Myra Georgina Laurente Arevalo and her officer Jerome Pastor.
The provisional writ is issued while the DBSN’ civil case for recovery of damages against the defendants is still pending in court.
With this writ, the properties of the defendants may not be disposed of but is held instead as security to satisfy for whatever damages the court might decide to impose in a pending case against the defendants later on.
DBSN Farms Agriventures Corporation (DBSN Farms in short)—with principal office located at Brgy. Antipolo in Albuera, Leyte and a chicken breeding farm at Brgy. San Joaquin in Palompon, Leyte—is a major supplier of chicken and fertilized eggs to big clients in Eastern Visayas, and even outside the region.
The case for damages started when then mayor Arevalo, in cohort with his officer Pastor, denied the renewal of DBSN Farms’ business permit in Palompon, and then issued a cease and desist order (CDO) a month later, causing a stoppage of operations of the farm.
DBSN Farms argued that it had complied with all the statutory requirements for a business, thus Arevalo’s act of closing the business was “designed merely to harass the company for purely personal and political motives.”
The court eventually issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) and preliminary injunction (PI) against Arevalo’s CDO, upholding DBSN’s rights to continue the chicken breeder farm operations.
Yet the damage to the business had been done. DBSN said the actions of Arevalo and Pastor caused it to suffer tremendous financial losses, as it failed to deliver to its major clients, dressed chickens and fertilized eggs amounting to more than P195.25 million, throughout the time when Arevalo ordered the business closed.
DBSN Farms said the total chicken meat requirement in Eastern Visayas is about 64,000 tons, and more than half of that is supplied by that farm in Palompon.
However, this supply flow was cut off due to acts of Arevalo and Pastor, prompting the DBSN clients to source the meat instead from other remote suppliers outside the region at a higher price.
The court, in granting the writ of attachments, stated that government employees should ensure that they serve the public with utmost integrity, justness and sincerity. “Arevalo’s acts, as well as Pastor’s were beyong the powers granted to them by the law,” it said.
DBSN said that this is now a warning to all that “no one is above the law and those who capriciously act in the guise of the powers vested upon them certainly have to pay the price of the abuse” they committed. —Miriam G. Desacada