DISBARMENT CASE | Supreme Court suspends Gadon over vulgar remarks to a journalist

January 4, 2022 , 08:43 PM

By Clarist Zablan

(January 4, 2022) – The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday ordered the preventive suspension of a controversial lawyer and senatorial candidate, who went under fire after he spewed profanities to a journalist in a viral video.

The high court said it will issue a show cause order to Lorenzo Gadon to explain within ten days why he should not be disbarred, after he uploaded a video making vulgar remarks against Raissa Robles, a correspondent of Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

“The public has urged the Court and the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) to discipline Gadon over his latest vulgar rant, saying that Atty. Gadon’s actions are not only an insult to Robles, but to the entire legal profession as well. The call of the public did not fall on deaf ears, and the Court immediately took action,” the court said in a statement.

Sinuspende ng Supreme Court si Atty. Larry Gadon, na isa ring senatorial aspirant sa 2022 elections, may kinalaman sa kaniyang viral video na kung saan ay lantaran niyang pinagmumumura at binastos ang journalist na si Raissa Robles. | via Marlene Alcaide pic.twitter.com/csp4fMjS4e

— News5 (@News5PH) January 4, 2022

The court has also directed the Office of the Bar Confidant and the IBP to submit their reports on the pending administrative cases against Gadon.

In response, Gadon raised suspicions that the move may have been politically motivated.

“For an institution that prides itself for safeguarding due process of laws, I am confused that the Supreme Court immediately suspended me without due process and my suspension was announced in the media without furnishing me first with a copy of the complaint, if there is any,” he said in a statement.

Gadon, who has described himself as a “Marcos loyalist,” became enraged when Robles called presidential aspirant and the son of the late Philippine dictator, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, a “tax evader.”

Marcos is currently facing a number of election cases to remove him from the presidential race, all asserting that he is not qualified to run after he had been convicted for failing to file his income tax returns from 1982 to 1985, when he was still a government official in Ilocos Norte.

Media organizations and rights groups slammed Gadon’s video as “hateful” and “misogynistic,” urging the court to disbar him.

Gadon has been facing five more disbarment complaints, all over vulgar language. Different complainants slammed the lawyer for vowing to kill Muslims during his 2016 senatorial campaign, making false allegations against an ousted chief magistrate in 2018 and calling her supporters “bobo,” and falsely alleging a late president to have died from AIDS.

He has been penalized with a three-month suspension in 2019 after he mocked a dermatologist in 2009 for seeking legal remedies after her clinic hours were reduced, saying that suits can take a long time to resolve. He used to be an executive of a healthcare company.

“Gadon was already warned that a repetition of the same or similar act shall be dealt with more severely. But despite such warning, Gadon has continued to display similarly abhorrent behavior, with the viral video against Robles,” the court said.

(MM)

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