Exclusive - Lawyer Got Suspended for a Year for Harrassing Vicki Belo on Social Media. READ HERE!

Social media plays a vital role in today's social structures. Though mostly treated as a platform for communication, it has also become a minefield as any of your posts can be taken against you as well.

This lawyer had to learn this lesson the hard way. 

Atty. Roberto “Argee” C. Guevarra just got suspended for one whole year after he insulted Dr. Victoria "Vicky" Belo in a series of post. 

Guevarra is the lawyer of Josefina Norcio who filed charges against Belo because of an alleged botched surgery on her buttocks last 2002 and 2005. It was in 2009 when he started verbally assaulting Dr. Belo on his Facebook account. 

One of his posts includes: "will go down in Medical History as a QUACK DOCTOR!!! QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK.” 

Another was “out to get Puwetic Justice here!” and  “how the payola machinery of vicki belo killed the news of a picket demonstration in front of the Belo clinic.”

He also threatened her and her clinics, saying that he will “and seek out her patients and customers to boycott her...with all the kababuyan (mess) of the Belo clinic, its money-making machines, dapat (they should) convert them into public health clinics!!! instead of pandering to the vanities of those who want to look like Dra. Belo;” 

With this, Belo filed charges against him and the Supreme Court favored the doctor's complaint. 

According the 13-page decision released by the SC through Associate Justice Estela Perlas-Bernabe, the acts were a clear violation of the Code of Professional Responsibility.

“A punctilious scrutiny of the Facebook remarks complained of disclosed that they were ostensibly made with malice tending to insult and tarnish the reputation of complainant and her clinic,” the court stated. 

“Calling complainant a ‘quack doctor, ‘Reyna ng Kaplastikan,’ ‘Reyna ng Payola,’ and ‘Reyna ng Kapalpakan,’ and insinuating that she has been bribing people to destroy respondent smacks of bad faith and reveals an intention to besmirch the name and reputation of complainant, as well as Belo Medical Group Inc. (BMGI),” the court added. 

Meanwhile, Guevarra is yet to issue his statement regarding the issue. 

Source: TNP, Inquirer