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For the past 21 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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This website includes selected articles from this week's edition of the Filipino Express. Not all the stories published in the printed version appear on this site.
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NEW YORK– A United States federal judge has ordered the Philippine government to pay $10.9 million in back taxes for operating a building on a prime stretch of Fifth Avenue, New York City.
In his ruling, US District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff said New York City had a right to collect taxes on portions of buildings used by other countries for non-diplomatic purposes. Rakoff said diplomatic privileges do not exempt the countries from tax obligations since only the home of the head of a mission is exempted from taxes, as stated in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
The judge also ordered the government of India to pay $42.4 million in taxes for operating a 26-story tower near the United Nations building with 20 floors of apartments occupied by diplomatic employees. It should also pay $4.3 million in taxes for a six-story building with two floors of staff residences.
The Philippine Center at 556 Fifth Avenue in New York City was acquired by the Philippine government in 1973. The building houses the country’s Mission to the United Nations, the Trade Representatives Office, the Tourism Representatives Office, the Commission on Audit (COA) representative office and the center management office.
After closing the Maharlika restaurant, the Center leased the space from Nov. 5, 1987 up to May 1996 to Philippine National Bank and rented the “fourth floor" to the Philippine Airlines from 1974 to 1988. (MNS)
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CHICAGO, Illinois (JGLi) – A guardian ad litem (legal guardian) had been appointed by a Chicago-based Cook County Court judge, who supervised the $165-M settlement of the wrongful death suits filed by majority of the survivors of the 131 passengers and crews who died on board Air Philippine Flight 541 that crashed off a hilly coconut plantation in Samal Island near Davao City nearly eight years ago.
The court-supervised settlement is the biggest so far in the worst domestic plane disaster in Philippine history. Attorney Donald J. Nolan, founder of the lead Chicago- based Nolan Law Group, that initially brought the court suit before the Circuit Court of Cook County six years ago, said Judge Jennifer Duncan-Brice of the Circuit Court of Cook County has appointed Atty. David J. Gubbins of the Chicago-based Charles A. Boyle & Associates, Ltd., which specializes in civil litigation and class action law cases, as guardian ad litem (legal guardian) in the case.
As guardian ad litem, Mr. Gubbins will hold in trust the settlement money that will go to the minor survivors of the deceased. Espouses of survivors, parents of single survivors or siblings of survivors if they have no parents will be the beneficiaries of the compensation for 110 victims, who joined in the class action suit, against AAR Aircraft & Engine Group, a global provider of products and services to the aviation industry, leasing aircraft and engines to airlines around the world, and Fleet Business Credit Corporation, owner of the ill-fated plane, which leased it to Air Philippines.
Survivor of each victim stands to collect $1.5-M. “Since it is compensation, not income, there is not going to be any tax deduction,” according to Nolan, who will earn an average of 30 percent from each of the survivor’s compensation as attorney’s fees from each of the 47 out of the 110 victims’ survivors under a contingency arrangement.
The law firm of Gerald Sterns and Mike Verna, of Oakland and Walnut Creek, both of California, had 42 of the victims’ survivors as clients. While the San Mateo, California-based O’Reilly & Danko had 21 of the victims’ survivors as clients.
Nolan believes the most important reason that prompted the AAR Aircraft & Engine Group and the Fleet Business Credit Corporation to settle the case was the alleged commission of “spoliation” of evidence by Phil Oxby, employed by Air Claim, who was acting as representative of Lloyds of London. Mr. Oxby was said to have been involved in the burial of wreckage to conceal the evidence that will pinpoint the cause of the crash. Spoliation is the intentional alteration or destruction of evidence to conceal the truth.
Nolan was able to document the “spoliation” with the help of victims’ survivors, who took photos while the wreckage were being buried in concrete on orders of the “adjuster” of the insurance company. Nolan added that the crash would have been averted if Air Philippines added a “few cents” to the airline ticket purchase price so it can buy the inexpensive “enhanced group proximity warning system” (EGPWS) instead of keeping the older ground proximity warning system (GPWS).”
The EGPWS would have given the pilots a half minute warning that they were approaching a hill. Instead, with the GPWS, the pilots only had four seconds warning. Nolan also cited the need for adequate training of crew resource management (CRM), which was also one of the problems that caused the crash of Singapore Airline Flight SQ006 on Oct. 31, 2000. In both, Flights 541 and SQ006, the crew had too much deference in terms of decision-making to their pilots that they could not point out the mistakes of the pilots as part the culture of Asians, who have an overly respect to persons in authority, like the pilots. The crew could not question their supervisor or pilot in the cockpit r tell the pilot about the problem. Out of the 100 passengers of the Flight SQ006, half of the passengers lived, half died in a crash in Taipei.
In the case of the Flight 541, the Philippine Air Transportation Office (ATO) failed to raise the maintenance issue of the plane with Air Philippines, which failed to follow the maintenance and reporting of the plane condition with the AAR, particularly the purchase of the parts of the plane.
The legal team in the case obtained 30 depositions, 1000 pieces of documents, 10 liability experts, including Professor Thomas W. Dunfee, vice dean and director of undergraduate division of Wharton School of Business. Dean Dunfee was to discuss the “business ethics” in accidents motivated by “profit without regard to safety.” He was involved in the post-Enron era and was to question the business ethics of AAR and safety as the cornerstone of aviation.
Tom J. Ellis, director of litigation support of Nolan Law Group, said this story of Flight 541 is a “story about the ethical duties of American companies leasing dangerous airplanes to unsafe third world airlines and their duties when the inevitable disaster occurs.
“It involves risk assessments, cost-benefit analyses, and proven destruction and suppression of evidence, with the bottom line being the loss of many human lives. Above all else, it is a continuing story of international human rights being violated for profit.”
Ellis said there have been numerous aviation crashes in the last few years involving old airplanes being leased to third world airlines. In majority of these crashes, the lessors are avoiding any responsibility for the loss of human lives.
In January, 1999, AAR leased a Boeing 737-200 to Air Philippines, a then under-funded and unsafe, startup airline. It would become Air Philippines Flight 541, that crashed on April 19, 2000, killing all 131 people on board, making it the largest loss of life from an airline crash in Philippine history.
In April, 1999, the aircraft was sold by AAR to Fleet, and assigned Fleet rights under the lease with Air Philippines. However, neither AAR nor Fleet ever visited Air Philippines’ place of business. No one from either company ever inspected nor audited the airlines’ operations, maintenance or training. The required maintenance and training during the term of the lease was never performed and obvious dangers were ignored. (lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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