Just what this two landed businessman in Panglao are up to as they are locked up in a case involving “damages due to abuse of rights”? Well, only the events will teach them in its hour, but one thing is certain, there is such a case and it was filed before the Regional Trial Court in Quezon City. The case took a life of its own last week when a hearing was held in a posh resort in Laya, Baclayon town. The hearing held at the high-end Peacock Garden Luxury Resort and Spa was to hear the deposition of Gov. Erico Aumentado regarding the minutes of a meeting conducted by the Bohol Investment Board sometime in 2006. While the resort was at its planning stage, it applied a Bohol Investment Board accreditation so that it can avail of tax incentives due a pioneering venture like a resort development.

The defendant of the case businessman Norris Oculam was accused for damages due to abuse of rights by Spouses Richard and Phoebe Lim, owners of the high brow Eskaya Resort and Spa in Tawala Panglao. Both businessmen own vast landholdings in the Tawala beachfront area that the trigger of the welter of charges and countercharges involving the two were their ownership of large prime properties in that side of Panglao. But that is another story. What raised the hackles of the Lims in the instant case according to their legal counsel lawyer Recto Racho was the minutes of the Bohol Investment Board that purportedly charged them of destroying the corrals and sea grasses in the seawaters fronting their planned resort. Oculam who used to be the president of the Bohol Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) was a member of the board.

During Aumentado's deposition last Monday, the governor was asked to identify the board minutes that supposedly accused the Lim's destruction of the environment. In his deposition, Aumentado was quoted by the lawyer of the Lims that when the governor heard of reports regarding the accusation which was coursed through media's print and radio broadcast, he immediately ordered an investigation. According to Aumentado, to verify the media report, he did make his own ocular inspection to find out for himself if the same was true only to discover that nothing positive was evident contrary to media insinuation. In fact, when Eskaya applied for an Environmental Clearance Certificate or ECC, it was approved by the Environment Management Bureau (EMB) taking into account the inspection report by a team from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources headed by PENRO Nestor Canda.

The same report found no violation on the part of Eksaya as alleged in the media. According to Racho, the alleged accusation of environmental destruction which he termed in the complaint as “conclusively frivolous” resulted in the denial in the application for a term loan by the spouses Lims to develop the resort. The bank where the loan was applied was the Equitable PCIBank now the Banco de Oro or BDO. The alleged insidious manner of spreading baseless accusation and filing the frivolous accusation also resulted in some investors backing out from the project. Another consequence was that the project's financial viability was seriously jeopardized for several months thereafter. To compensate for the damages his client has suffered, the Lims asked for a total of P4.5 million in moral, temperarte or moderate, corrective damages including P300,000 in attorney's fees.

Summing up his position in the squabble between two businessmen that resulted in the court action, lawyer Racho said in the end, what is undeniable in the wake of so-called environmental depredation in the Eskaya's shoreline was that no right thinking investor will ever attempt to destroy the environment knowing fully well that it is considered the attraction for tourists to marvel as they set foot in resorts like the Eskaya Resort and Spa. Besides, the lawyer added, pouring in millions in investments to develop a resort only to destroy the environment is foolhardy and contrary to human experience.