Facts

• OMB-C-C-13-0313 (NBI and Atty. Levito Baligod v. Estrada, for Plunder) and OMB-C-C-13-0397 (Field Investigation Office, for Plunder and Section 3(e), R.A. No. 3019) were served on Sen. Jinggoy Estrada on 25 November and 3 December 2013; he filed counter-affidavits 9 and 16 January 2014. His eighteen co-respondents filed their own counter-affidavits between 9 December 2013 and 14 March 2014.
• On 20 March 2014 he requested copies of his co-respondents' counter-affidavits, new witnesses' affidavits and other filings, invoking Section 3(b), Rule 112§ and Section 4(c), Rule II of the Ombudsman's Rules. On 27 March 2014 the Ombudsman denied it, neither rule entitling a respondent to the filings of co-respondents, who are respondents, not the complainant.
• On 28 March 2014 the Ombudsman found probable cause for one count of Plunder and eleven counts of Section 3(e). On 7 April 2014 he moved for reconsideration of that Joint Resolution, raising among other grounds the 27 March denial as a due-process violation — but never moved for reconsideration of the 27 March Order itself. That omission is the case.
• On 7 May 2014, without waiting for the Ombudsman to rule, he filed this Rule 65 petition directly with the Supreme Court.
• The same day the Ombudsman issued a Joint Order furnishing him the counter-affidavits of Tuason, Cunanan, Amata, Relampagos, Figura, Buenaventura and Sevidal, with a non-extendible five days to comment. He filed no comment.
• On 4 June 2014 the Ombudsman denied his 7 April motion, noting it had held the motions in abeyance precisely to give him the chance he did not take, and finding no denial of due process.
• On 21 January 2015 the En Banc, through Justice Carpio, dismissed the petition.

Issue

Ruling

Sen. Estrada also raised in this Petition the same issue he raised in his Motion for Reconsideration of the 28 March 2014 Joint Resolution of the Ombudsman finding probable cause. While his Motion for Reconsideration of the 28 March 2014 Joint Resolution was pending, Sen. Estrada did not wait for the resolution of the Ombudsman and instead proceeded to file the present Petition for Certiorari. The Ombudsman issued a Joint Order on 4 June 2014 and specifically addressed the issue that Sen. Estrada is raising in this Petition. Thus, Sen. Estrada's present Petition for Certiorari is not only premature, it also constitutes forum shopping.

WHEREFORE, we DISMISS the Petition for Certiorari in G.R. Nos. 212140-41.

SO ORDERED.

Ratio

• The merits fell first, on the text. Section 3(b), Rule 112§ and Section 4(a)–(c), Rule II oblige the investigator to furnish only the complainant's and the complainant's witnesses' affidavits — never a co-respondent's — so the denial tracked the rules rather than departing from them.
• Then the procedure. A motion for reconsideration is the mandatory first recourse against an investigating body's order, and folding the objection into a different motion attacking the Joint Resolution left that remedy unexhausted, making certiorari premature.
• And the deeper defect was forum shopping: filing here while an unresolved motion raising the identical objection was pending exposed the system to conflicting rulings on the same question from two fora — independent of how either would have ruled.
• The disclosure point reinforced all of it. Per Ruivivar, even a genuine initial non-disclosure is cured once a later opportunity to respond is given and not taken — exactly what happened when he received the 7 May disclosures and filed nothing.

Doctrine

Full Digest — Recitation Format

Gist

Facts

1. OMB-C-C-13-0313 (NBI and Atty. Levito Baligod v. Estrada, et al., for Plunder under R.A. No. 7080) and OMB-C-C-13-0397 (Field Investigation Office v. Estrada, et al., for Plunder and violation of Section 3(e), R.A. No. 3019) were served on Sen. Estrada on 25 November and 3 December 2013, respectively; he filed counter-affidavits in each (9 and 16 January 2014). His eighteen co-respondents filed their own counter-affidavits between 9 December 2013 and 14 March 2014.
2. On 20 March 2014, Sen. Estrada filed a Request to be Furnished with Copies of Counter-Affidavits of the Other Respondents, Affidavits of New Witnesses and Other Filings, invoking Section 3(b), Rule 112§ (right to examine evidence submitted by the complainant) and Section 4(c), Rule II, Administrative Order No. 7 (Ombudsman's Rules of Procedure — access to evidence on record). On 27 March 2014, the Ombudsman denied the Request, reasoning that neither rule entitled a respondent to the filings of his co-respondents, who were themselves respondents, not the complainant.
3. On 28 March 2014, the Ombudsman issued a Joint Resolution finding probable cause to indict Sen. Estrada and his co-respondents for one count of Plunder and eleven counts of violation of Section 3(e), R.A. No. 3019. Sen. Estrada filed a Motion for Reconsideration of this Joint Resolution (7 April 2014), which — among other grounds — also raised the 27 March 2014 denial as a due-process violation. He did not, however, file a motion for reconsideration of the 27 March 2014 Order itself.
4. Without waiting for the Ombudsman to resolve that pending motion, Sen. Estrada filed the instant Petition for Certiorari under Rule 65 (7 May 2014) directly with the Supreme Court, seeking a declaration that he had been denied due process and that the 27 March 2014 Order and all subsequent proceedings were void, along with injunctive relief.
5. On the same day he filed this Petition, the Ombudsman issued a Joint Order furnishing Sen. Estrada with the counter-affidavits of several named co-respondents (Tuason, Cunanan, Amata, Relampagos, Figura, Buenaventura, and Sevidal) and directing him to comment within a non-extendible five days. Sen. Estrada did not file any comment.
6. On 4 June 2014, the Ombudsman issued another Joint Order denying Sen. Estrada's 7 April 2014 Motion for Reconsideration of the Joint Resolution, expressly noting that it had held the motions for reconsideration in abeyance to give Sen. Estrada the opportunity — which he did not take — to respond to the belatedly-furnished affidavits, and finding no denial of due process.
7. The public respondents (Ombudsman, FIO, NBI) and respondent Atty. Baligod separately filed Comments arguing the petition was procedurally infirm (litis pendentia, availability of a plain, speedy, and adequate remedy) and substantively without merit. Sen. Estrada filed a Reply insisting he still lacked several specific counter-affidavits and that the case was not moot despite the later disclosures.
8. The Supreme Court (Carpio, J., En Banc) rendered the Decision under digest on 21 January 2015, dismissing the petition.

Arguments of the Parties

Issue

Ruling

Sen. Estrada also raised in this Petition the same issue he raised in his Motion for Reconsideration of the 28 March 2014 Joint Resolution of the Ombudsman finding probable cause. While his Motion for Reconsideration of the 28 March 2014 Joint Resolution was pending, Sen. Estrada did not wait for the resolution of the Ombudsman and instead proceeded to file the present Petition for Certiorari. The Ombudsman issued a Joint Order on 4 June 2014 and specifically addressed the issue that Sen. Estrada is raising in this Petition. Thus, Sen. Estrada's present Petition for Certiorari is not only premature, it also constitutes forum shopping.

WHEREFORE, we DISMISS the Petition for Certiorari in G.R. Nos. 212140-41.

SO ORDERED.

Ratio

1. The Court first foreclosed the merits of the due-process claim on textual grounds: Section 3(b), Rule 112§ and Section 4(a)-(c), Rule II of the Ombudsman's Rules, read together, oblige the investigating officer to furnish only the complainant's and the complainant's supporting witnesses' affidavits — never a co-respondent's — so the 27 March 2014 denial tracked, rather than departed from, the governing rules.
2. Having found no substantive violation, the Court then addressed why, even assuming some irregularity, the petition could not succeed procedurally: a motion for reconsideration is the mandatory first recourse against an investigating body's order, and Sen. Estrada's failure to file one specifically directed at the 27 March 2014 Order — as opposed to folding the objection into his separate motion attacking the Joint Resolution on probable-cause grounds — left the plain, speedy, and adequate remedy of reconsideration unexhausted, rendering certiorari premature under Rule 65, Section 1.
3. The Court then identified the more fundamental procedural flaw: by filing this certiorari petition while an unresolved motion for reconsideration raising the identical due-process objection remained pending before the Ombudsman, Sen. Estrada exposed the judicial system to the precise harm the forum-shopping rule guards against — the possibility of conflicting rulings on the same question from two different fora — independent of whether either forum's eventual ruling would have favored him.
4. As reinforcing (not independently dispositive) context, the Court invoked Ruivivar v. Office of the Ombudsman to show that even a genuine initial non-disclosure is cured, for due-process purposes, once the respondent is given a later opportunity to respond and fails to take it — precisely what happened when Sen. Estrada received the 7 May 2014 disclosures but filed no comment — further undercutting any claim of an uncured due-process injury independent of the procedural defects already fatal to the petition.

Doctrine

1. A respondent's right to examine evidence during preliminary investigation under Section 3(b), Rule 112§ extends only to "the evidence submitted by the complainant," not to the counter-affidavits or filings of co-respondents, quoting Paderanga v. Drilon: "the respondent shall only have the right to submit a counter-affidavit, to examine all other evidence submitted by the complainant and, where the fiscal sets a hearing to propound clarificatory questions to the parties or their witnesses, to be afforded an opportunity to be present but without the right to examine or cross-examine."
2. A party aggrieved by an investigating body's resolution or order must first move for reconsideration before that body — the review mechanism the rules contemplate — before resorting to Rule 65 certiorari; failure to do so renders the petition premature, since "certiorari will lie only if there is no appeal or any other plain, speedy and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law."
3. Simultaneously maintaining a pending motion for reconsideration before the investigating body and a certiorari petition raising the identical issue before a reviewing court constitutes forum shopping, warranting outright dismissal, since the general exemption of certiorari petitions from the forum-shopping rule "is true only where a petition for certiorari is properly or regularly invoked in the usual course" and "does not apply when the relief sought... is still pending with or has yet to be decided by the respondent... body."
4. An opportunity to be heard that is belatedly given, but not availed of by the party, cures the antecedent due-process defect — "[t]he law can no longer help one who had been given ample opportunity to be heard but who did not take full advantage of the proffered chance," citing Ruivivar v. Office of the Ombudsman.
5. The administrative due-process standards of Ang Tibay v. Court of Industrial Relations, as amplified by GSIS v. CA (requiring, among others, an impartial tribunal and a hearing), do not apply to preliminary investigations, because preliminary investigation is an executive, not adjudicative, function that does not finally determine rights and obligations, and because the same officer may properly act as fact-finder, investigator, and resolving authority at that stage — unlike an administrative adjudication.
6. The right to a preliminary investigation, and the procedural rights exercised within it, are statutory, not constitutional, quoting Hashim v. Boncan ("the right to a preliminary investigation is statutory, not constitutional") and Lozada v. Hernandez ("rights conferred upon accused persons to participate in preliminary investigations... depend upon the provisions of law by which such rights are specifically secured, rather than upon the phrase 'due process of law'").
7. Probable cause may be established using hearsay evidence, so long as there is a substantial basis for crediting the hearsay — a standard distinct from, and lower than, the "substantial evidence" required in administrative adjudication, since "substantial basis is not the same as substantial evidence because substantial evidence excludes hearsay evidence while substantial basis can include hearsay evidence."

• The Court distinguished Office of the Ombudsman v. Reyes — relied upon by Justice Velasco's dissent to argue co-respondents' affidavits should have been disclosed — as an administrative disciplinary case governed by Rule III (Procedure in Administrative Cases) of the Ombudsman's Rules, where rights are finally adjudicated and Ang Tibay standards genuinely apply, unlike the present criminal preliminary-investigation setting governed by Rule II.
• It likewise distinguished Tatad v. Sandiganbayan and Duterte v. Sandiganbayan — also invoked in dissent — as involving actual, inordinate procedural delay or a wholesale failure to follow the correct counter-affidavit procedure, neither of which was shown here.
• The prematurity/forum-shopping holdings are similarly fact-specific: they turn on Sen. Estrada's own choice to raise the identical objection in two fora at once, and would not bar a petitioner who properly awaited resolution of a single pending motion for reconsideration before seeking certiorari.

• Estrada v. Ombudsman (2015) directly illustrates the review mechanism contemplated by Rule 112§'s Section 4 and its Ombudsman-rule analogues: a party's remedy against an investigating body's resolution or order runs first through reconsideration before that body, and only thereafter — and not simultaneously — through certiorari; conflating the two, or bypassing the first, defeats the petition regardless of its underlying merits.

Separate Opinions

• (a) Office of the Ombudsman v. Reyes should govern and require disclosure of co-respondents' affidavits.
• (b) "A uniform observance of the singular concept of due process is indispensable in all proceedings."
• (c) Sen. Estrada should not "be subjected to the rigors of a criminal prosecution in court" while the due-process question remained pending.
• (d) Tatad v. Sandiganbayan and Duterte v. Sandiganbayan support relief for Sen. Estrada.