Mar. 05, 2004

Victor Agustin
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Yes, yes, Nanette

BANCO Filipino vice chairman Albert "Bobby" Aguirre lost the foreclosure case he filed in Seattle on the home-for-the-aged business set up by his younger sister Nanette.

According to an eyewitness, the jury on Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) reached a unanimous verdict in less than an hour of deliberations in deciding to throw out Bobby's suit.

Bobby, the administrator of the Aguirre estate, claimed the two million dollars (four million now, with interest, as per Bobby's claim) used by Nanette and her American husband to set up a home-for-the-aged in a Seattle suburb was a loan from the Aguirre companies that has gone unpaid.

Although he initiated the suit, Bobby never appeared for the trial proper but relied on two Aguirre executives, one of whom is former congresswoman Maria Amelita Villarosa of Mindoro Occidental province, to testify on his behalf.

Villarosa's credibility, unfortunately for Bobby, was impeached after Nanette's lawyer Robert Banks introduced a Philippine Supreme Court decision. That decision, written by Chief Justice Hilario Davide, unseated Villarosa for "bad faith and malice" in misappropriating her husband's initials to win votes for her during the closely contested 1998 election in her congressional district.

Nanette, on the other hand, testified that her father in his final years wanted her to be secure in the United States because, as Banks explained, "the Philippine legal system would not be able to protect her from her feuding brothers," referring to Bobby and Adolfo.

In any case, the two million dollars pales in comparison to the 400-million-dollar estate that their father, Tomas Aguirre, left at the time of his death.

The Seattle trial took only five days of daily hearings. In contrast, the Parañaque City probate hearings on the Aguirre estate has dragged on for eight years, with the trial still stuck in the discovery phase and the judge even being ordered by the Supreme Court to continue the hearings although he had formally asked for a replacement.