Legal & Judicial Ethics, 2018 Bar — Question XIII

ESSAY

Dr. Cielo is a well-known medical doctor specializing in cosmetic surgery. Dr. Cielo, together with a team of doctors, performed a surgical buttocks enhancement procedure in her clinic on Ms. Cossette Concio (Concio). Unfortunately, after a couple of years, the implant introduced during the enhancement procedure caused infection and Concio became seriously ill. Concio filed a criminal action for medical malpractice against Dr. Cielo which was eventually dismissed for failure to prove that Dr. Cielo was negligent. Concio was represented in this action by Atty. Cogie Ciguerra (Ciguerra). After they lost the medical malpractice case, Ciguerra started writing a series of posts on his Facebook (FB) account containing insulting and verbally abuse language against Dr. Cielo. Among others, Ciguerra called Dr. Cielo a quack doctor, “reyna ng kaplastikan at kapalpakan”, and accused her of maintaining a payola or extra-legal budget to pay off prosecutors and judges in order to win her cases. He also called on patients to boycott the clinic of Dr. Cielo. Dr. Cielo filed a disbarment case against Ciguerra for posting on his FB account, sexist, vulgar, and obscene comments, and language disrespectful of women in his FB posts. Ciguerra’s defense is that his FB posts were private remarks on his private FB account and only meant to be shared among his FB friends, and Dr. Cielo was not part of them. He also claimed that the disbarment case was filed in violation of his constitutionally-guaranteed right to privacy. The Court, however, found that Ciguerra’s FB account did not have privacy settings. Can Ciguerra be disbarred for the series of posts in his FB account against Dr. Cielo?

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