Volume 6, Issue No. 46
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
Our latest as of Friday, April 25, 2025
~ Balita publisher/editor Teresita "Tess" Cusipag went ballistic the moment she learned she lost in the defamation case filed against her by businesswoman Lily Miranda. That means paying up a total of $250,000 in damages for her egregious lies. As reality sinks in, she puts the blame for her ordeal on this writer, and forgets that it was her lawyer, Dominador "Jun" Saludares, who tried and failed in this latest legal fight.
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LAWSUIT LOSS MEANS PAYING UP $250,000
Cusipag Lays Blame Not On Her Lawyer
Liwayway Miranda's Suit Could Cripple Balita Tabloid
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others." - C.S. Lewis
TORONTO - Within minutes of the release of the Ontario Superior Court decision finding her and her paper liable for defamation, Teresita "Tess" Cusipag, publisher/editor of Balita tabloid, sent an email blaming this reporter for her latest ordeal.
She was unleashing her anger, after all the loss of a quarter of a million dollars in a lawsuit would further deplete what's left of her vaunted millionaire status (if that is true). Remember that she previously lost almost $1 million in damages in two other lawsuits.
It's clear to me that she's looking for someone to whine against, and despite the fact that I'd been out of Balita (I reported and wrote a column there for seven years ending in July 2019), she continues to hammer me like I'm a punching bag.
She conveniently forgets that it's her lawyer, Dominador "Jun" Saludares, who defended her mindless postings in court and is responsible for her downfall.
In late January 2023, Ms. Cusipag boasted that she would fight the lawsuit brought against her by Liwayway Miranda and hire "not just lawyers anymore" but "good ones instead," ostensibly alluding to previous losses.
So it's safe to say that in her judgment, her categorization of "good ones" included Saludares and no other simply because it was him who fought her legal battle against Ms. Miranda.
(Related story at: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2022/01/good-lawyering-won-libel-cases.html).
Ms. Cusipag writes without regard for punctuations (and she's supposed to be an editor). She says in an email: "the news tht lily won the case vs balita tht you provoked for reason only u know. How I was being punished for unknown reasons. How I lost all my resources because of lawsuits tht you created. Am going to appeal this but I just hope tht you are not gloating after all I was able to help you too wen you were starting life here in Canada"
Look at her language: "Case I provoked". "Punished for unknown reasons." "Lawsuits I created." I don't know if she's out of her mind or just in complete denial. Is age catching up?
But reading through the decision by Ontario Superior Court Justice R. Lee Akazaki, it appears that Ms. Cusipag was dishonest and lied about it. (Related story: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-lies-and-fantastic-tales-of-eino.html).
She had just been slapped with a $250,000 penalty in a libel suit by Ms. Miranda over her unfounded allegation that she was a "scammer hunted by victims" whom she allegedly owed "millions of dollars."
Nothing could be further from the truth. Ms. Cusipag's assertions, originally published in Balita in 2020 and reposted on social media in 2022, were fatuous lies, so egregious that they offend the court's sense of decency.
Ms. Miranda's counsel - Mohsen Seddigh and Maria Arabella Robles - had stated that starting in February 2020, Ms. Cusipag and Balita published articles and statements "falsely accusing - expressly and by implication - Ms. Miranda of fraud, scams, swindling, racketeering, 'faked investing, being a 'Scammer', credit card theft, forgery, blackmail, threats, providing licensed services without licenses, etc.".
The trial had unraveled that Ms. Cusipag had relied on her lawyer, Dominador "Jun" Saludares, for the reposts she did claiming that Ms. Miranda, in his own words, was the "summa cum laude" of "scammers." The judge said it was an "inflammatory mischaracterization."
The description was picked up by Ms. Cusipag twice, once in 2020, and again on December 18, 2022 in Balita. In addition, the court noted that she also accused Ms. Miranda of distributing “reject ham and sausages to the people in violation of the Ministry of Health instructions” and declaring, in all-caps: “JUST GET LAID TO EARN MONEY.”
"It turned out," said the court, "that the only source of her information was the paralegal, Mr. Saludares – the same Mr. Saludares who, now a lawyer, represented her and Balita at trial."
"SALUDARES – Professional Misconduct – Findings and Penalty – Facilitating Fraud, Failing to Comply with Client Verification Requirements, Acting Outside Scope – The Paralegal entered an agreed statement of facts and admitted that he committed professional misconduct as alleged when he accepted a retainer to collect a purported debt of over $500,000 in circumstances where he ought to have known that the client was engaged in fraud – Joint penalty submission for three-month suspension and $5,000 in costs with two years to pay accepted as reasonable – Although there had been significant neglect of duty and a substantial fraud in the amount of $434,764, the respondent was a new licensee, remorseful and had immediately reported the matter to police upon realizing the cheques were fraudulent and fully co-operated with the Law Society."
In the decision rendered on Wednesday, April 23, Justice R. Lee Akazaki stated that "Ms. Cusipag considered his (Saludares') words as licence to invent her own story of hundreds of recruits seeking to recover millions of dollars from Ms. Miranda, who took them 'for a ride'."
"Beyond the beliefs they held," the judge wrote, "the defendants tendered no evidence to justify the characterization of the plaintiff as the perpetrator of a scam, or any similar scheme to defraud the workers they recruited."
In awarding Ms. Miranda $150,000 in general damages and $100,000 in punitive damages, the judge explained that the fine "is meant to act as a deterrent to the defendant and to others from acting in this manner."
He wrote: "It is important to emphasize that punitive damages should only be awarded in those circumstances where the combined award of general and aggravated damages would be insufficient to achieve the goal of punishment and deterrence." (Copyright 2025. All Rights Reserved).
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