Summary for the case

The Petitioners of this case are members of the Malaya Lolas Orgnization namely Isabelita C. Vinuya and
70 other elderly women against Justice Mariano C. Del Castillo, the respondent. The case is about the
decision for the court that Justice Del Castillo wrote in the case of the petitioners. The counsel of Vinuya
et.al filed a petition regarding the plagiarism and the twisted stolen passages to support that Filipino
comfort women of World War II have no further legal remedies. In line with this, petitioners are
contending that Justice Del Castillo commits intellectual theft and outright plagiarism and that he
twisted the intention of the said plagiarize sources. It is also stated in the case the three foreign articles
that were allegedly copied by Justice Del Castillo in his decision without acknowledgement: A Fiduciary
Theory of Jus Cogens by Evan J. Criddle and Evan Fox-Descent, Yale Journal of International Law (2009),
Breaking the Silence: Rape as an International Crime by Mark Ellis, Case Western Reserve Journal
of International Law (2006) and lastly Enforcing Erga Omnes Obligations by Christian J. Tams,
Cambridge University Press (2005).

The questions in this case were whether Justice Del Castillo copied the published works of the three
foreign articles that he cited in his Vinuya case ruling, as well as if he misrepresented the plagiarized
material to make it appear as though it supported the court's position.

The court dismissed the petition for lack of merit regarding the charges of plagiarism and twisting of
cited sources of the petitioner against Justice Del Castillo. The court reiterates the meaning of
plagiarism, and they cited what it written in Webster which goes like this “to take (ideas, writings, etc.)
from (another) and pass them off as one’s own.” In this case, Del Castillo said that he had the motive to
cite all the sources that he wrote in his opinion and because of this the court finds that the respondent
doesn’t have the intention to gain credit of the articles as his own. There is also an explanation made by
Justice Del Castillo’s researcher stating that she unintentionally deleted the said attribution for she did
her research electronically. This explanation is credible to the court because for them the intentional
deletion of the said citation doesn’t make sense and this act will not gain both the Del Castillo and his
researcher. And base on these facts that were provided by the court, the question regarding the twisting
of the intent of the plagiarized matter is impossible for all the attributions were accidentally deleted,
therefore twisting the meaning of the same doesn’t make sense.