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QUESTION: Can the Office of the Solicitor General represent a public officer or employee in the preliminary investigation of a criminal action against him or in a civil action for damages against him?

Accordingly, there is a clear conflict of interest here, and one which smacks of ethical considerations, where the Office of the Solicitor General, as counsel for the public official, defends the latter in the preliminary investigation stage of the criminal case, and where the same office, as appellate counsel of the People of the Philippines, represents the prosecution when the case is brought on appeal. This anomalous situation could not have been contemplated and allowed by the law, its unconditional terms and provisions notwithstanding. It is a situation which cannot be countenanced by the Court. 

Otherwise, if the Solicitor General who represents the state on appeal in criminal cases can appear for the accused public official in a preliminary investigation, then by the same token a provincial or city fiscal, his assistant or any government prosecutor who represents the People of the Philippines at the preliminary investigation of a case up to the trial thereof can appear for an accused public official at the preliminary investigation being conducted by another fiscal, prosecutor or municipal judge. The situation would simply be scandalous, to say the least.

There is likewise another reason, as earlier discussed, why the Office of the Solicitor General cannot represent an accused in a criminal case. Inasmuch as the State can speak and act only by law, whatever it does say and do must be lawful, and that which is unlawful is not the word or deed of the State, but is the mere wrong or trespass of those individual persons who falsely speak and act in its name. 28 Therefore, the accused public official should not expect the State, through the Office of the Solicitor General, to defend him for a wrongful act which cannot be attributed to the State itself. In the same light, a public official who is sued in a criminal case is actually sued in his personal capacity inasmuch as his principal, the State, can never be the author of a wrongful act, much less commit a crime.

This observation should apply as well to a public official who is haled to court on a civil suit for damages arising from a felony allegedly committed by him. 30 Any pecuniary liability he may be held to account for on the occasion of such civil suit is for his own account. The State is not liable for the same. A fortiori, the Office of the Solicitor General likewise has no authority to represent him in such a civil suit for damages.

 (ILUMINADO URBANO and MARCIAL ACAPULCO, petitioners, vs. FRANCISCO I. CHAVEZ, RAMON BARCELONA and AMY LAZARO-JAVIER, respondents. EN BANC[G.R. No. 87977.  March 19, 1990.])

QUESTION: Applicability of PD 1818, prohibiting courts from issuing TROs to infrastructure projects of government instrumentalities>

In the case of Datiles and Co. vs. Sucaldito, 9 this Court interpreted a similar prohibition contained in P.D. 605, the law after which P.D. 1818 was patterned. It was there declared that the prohibition pertained to the issuance of injunctions or restraining orders by courts against administrative acts in controversies involving facts or the exercise of discretion in technical cases. The Court observed that to allow the courts to judge these matters would disturb the smooth functioning of the administrative machinery. Justice Teodoro Padilla made it clear, however, that on issues definitely outside of this dimension and involving questions of law, courts could not be prevented by P.D. No. 605 from exercising their power to restrain or prohibit administrative acts.

P.D. 1818 was not intended to shield from judicial scrutiny irregularities committed by administrative agencies such as the anomalies above described. Hence, the challenged restraining order was not improperly issued by the respondent judge and the writ of preliminary injunction should not have been denied. We note from Annex Q of the private respondent's memorandum, however, that the subject project has already been "100% completed as to the Engineering Standard." This fait accompli has made the petition for a writ of preliminary injunction moot and academic.(MALAGA V. PENACHOS,September 3, 1992)