This case has been cited 1 times or more.
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2013-11-20 |
PEREZ, J. |
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| In upholding the validity of the SPA, the Court of Appeals brushed aside the foregoing testimonial evidence of the expert witness and made an independent examination of the questioned signatures, and based thereon, ruled that there is no forgery. The appellate court attributed the variations to the passage of time and the person's increase in age and dismissed the findings of the expert witness because it failed to comply with the rules set forth in jurisprudence that the standard should embrace the time of origin of the document, so that one part comes from the time before the origin and one part from the time after the origin. [27] We are not unmindful of the principle that in order to bring about an accurate comparison and analysis, the standard of comparison must be as close as possible in point of time to the suspected signature.[28] However, when the dissimilarity between the genuine and false specimens of writing is visible to the naked eye and would not ordinarily escape notice or detection from an unpracticed observer, resort to technical rules is no longer necessary and the instrument may be stricken off for being spurious. More so when, as in this case, the forgery was testified to and thus established by evidence other than the writing itself. When so established and is conspicuously evident from its appearance, the opinion of handwriting experts on the forged document is no longer necessary.[29] | |||||