Hours after learning of the penalty against him, Atty. Jesus Nicardo Falcis III turned the moment into a public challenge aimed at the country’s two most prominent figures facing their own bar cases.
In a statement posted to Facebook, the lawyer said he would not contest the Supreme Court’s order suspending him for a year from the practice of law. “I accept the wisdom of the Supreme Court to suspend me for one year. All lawyers are under the disciplinary power of the Court and I am no exception,” he wrote.
Falcis traced the conduct behind the sanction to the period between 2018 and 2019, when his brother Nicko was entangled in litigation with actress Kris Aquino. He framed his social media activity at the time as the only recourse available to a family that felt cornered. “I felt helpless and powerless except for my small voice on social media. We were nobodies and I was screaming against the void,” he said, adding that he had been fighting for his brother’s “life and liberty” along with his family’s safety and reputation.
The lawyer did not dispute that his language carried consequences. “I recognize that words, contained in a tweet, have power and my choice of words should have consequences. All lawyers should be held accountable for their words and actions,” he stated. He went further, declaring that the suspension was a cost he was prepared to bear: “If being suspended is the price I have to pay for defending my family, then it is a price I will pay in any lifetime.”
From there, Falcis pivoted to the pending disbarment complaints against former President Rodrigo Duterte and Vice President Sara Duterte, urging the high court to rule on them. “That is why I prostrate myself to the Supreme Court for disciplining me and in the same vein, I beg the Honorable Court to resolve the pending disbarment cases of former President Rodrigo Duterte, and Vice President Sara Duterte, to show that indeed, no one is above the law,” he wrote.
He reserved a pointed appeal for the senators set to sit in judgment over the vice president’s impeachment. “And to our dear Senator-Judges, if a lawyer like me can be suspended for cursing, then a Vice President like Sara Duterte should likewise be answerable not just for cursing but for threatening the life of the President and the First Lady,” Falcis said, closing with the line that accountability “should apply to all, big or small.”
The suspension itself stemmed from a 2018 post on X in which Falcis directed invectives at people who had sided with Aquino in her dispute with Nicko, whom the actress had accused of qualified theft. The Court’s Second Division, in a decision penned by Associate Justice Jhosep Lopez, found him liable for simple misconduct, holding that a lawyer’s freedom to speak is bounded by the sworn duties of Bar membership.
The Integrated Bar of the Philippines had recommended only a fine for the infraction. The justices opted for a heavier hand, pointing to Falcis’s record of prior violations as the basis for the one-year ban.
