Petitioners Isabelita C. Vinuya, et al.

, all members of the Malaya Lolas Organization, seek

reconsideration of the decision of the Court dated October 12, 2010 that dismissed their charges of
plagiarism, twisting of cited materials, and gross neglect against Justice Mariano Del Castillo in
connection with the decision he wrote for the Court in G.R. No. 162230, entitled Vinuya v. Romulo.1

Mainly, petitioners claim that the Court has by its decision legalized or approved of the commission
of plagiarism in the Philippines.

Black’s Law Dictionary, the world’s leading English law dictionary quoted by the Court in its decision,
defines plagiarism as the "deliberate and knowing presentation of another person's original ideas or
creative expressions as one’s own."2 The presentation of another person’s ideas as one’s own must
be deliberate or premeditated—a taking with ill intent.

Justice Del Castillo failed to attribute to the foreign authors materials that he lifted from their works
and used in writing the decision for the Court in the Vinuya case. But, as the Court said, the
evidence as found by its Ethics Committee shows that the attribution to these authors appeared in
the beginning drafts of the decision. Unfortunately, as testified to by a highly qualified and
experienced court-employed researcher, she accidentally deleted the same at the time she was
cleaning up the final draft. The Court believed her since, among other reasons, she had no motive
for omitting the attribution. The foreign authors concerned, like the dozens of other sources she cited
in her research, had high reputations in international law.1aw phi 1

Notably, those foreign authors expressly attributed the controversial passages found in their works to
earlier writings by others. The authors concerned were not themselves the originators. As it
happened, although the ponencia of Justice Del Castillo accidentally deleted the attribution to them,
there remained in the final draft of the decision attributions of the same passages to the earlier
writings from which those authors borrowed their ideas in the first place. In short, with the remaining
attributions after the erroneous clean-up, the passages as it finally appeared in the Vinuya decision
still showed on their face that the lifted ideas did not belong to Justice Del Castillo but to others. He
did not pass them off as his own.

Issue:
Whether or not Justice Del Castillo committed plagiarism

Held:
the Court DENIES petitioners’ motion for reconsideration for lack of merit
the Court need not dwell long on petitioners’ allegations that Justice Del Castillo had also committed
plagiarism in writing for the Court his decision in another case, Ang Ladlad v. Commission on
Elections.10 Petitioners are nit-picking. Upon close examination and as Justice Del Castillo amply
demonstrated in his comment to the motion for reconsideration, he in fact made attributions to
passages in such decision that he borrowed from his sources although they at times suffered in
formatting lapses.

In Vinuya, Justice Del Castillo examined and summarized the facts as seen by the opposing sides in
a way that no one has ever done. He identified and formulated the core of the issues that the parties
raised. And when he had done this, he discussed the state of the law relevant to their resolution. It
was here that he drew materials from various sources, including the three foreign authors cited in the
charges against him. He compared the divergent views these present as they developed in history.
He then explained why the Court must reject some views in light of the peculiar facts of the case and
applied those that suit such facts. Finally, he drew from his discussions of the facts and the law the
right solution to the dispute in the case. On the whole, his work was original. He had but done an
honest work.