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Question XXIII
XXIII. Atty. Billy, a young associate in a medium-sized law firm, was in a rush to meet the deadline for filing his appellant's brief. He used the internet for legal research by typing keywords on his favorite search engine, which led him to many websites containing text of Philippine jurisprudence. None of these sites was owned or maintained by the Supreme Court. He found a case he believed to be directly applicable to his client's cause, so he copied the text of the decision from the blog of another law firm, and pasted the text to the document he was working on. The formatting of the text he had copied was lost when he pasted it to the document, and he could not distinguish anymore which portions were the actual findings or rulings of the Supreme Court, and which were quoted portions from the other sources that were used in the body of the decision. Since his deadline was fast approaching, he decided to just make it appear as if every word he quoted was part of the ruling of the Court, thinking that it would not be discovered. Atty. Billy's opponent, Atty. Ally, a very conscientious former editor of her school's law journal, noticed many discrepancies in Atty. Billy's supposed quotations from the Supreme Court decision when she read the text of the case from her copy of the PhUippine Reports. Atty. Billy failed to reproduce the punctuation marks and font sizes used by the Court. Worse, he quoted the arguments of one party as presented in the case, which arguments happened to be favorable to his position, and not the ruling or reasoning of the Court, but this distinction was not apparent in his brief. Appalled, she filed a complaint against him. a. Did Atty. Billy fail in his duty as a lawyer? What rules did he violate, if any? (2%) b. How should lawyers quote a Supreme Court decision? (2%)
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