Private respondents have indeed resorted to forum-shopping in order to obtain a favorable decision. The familiar pattern (of one party's practice of deliberately seeking out a "sympathetic" court) is undisputedly revealed by the fact that after Felipe Layos instituted in 1992 a case for injunction and damages with application for preliminary injunction in the Regional Trial Court of Bian, Laguna and after his prayer for a preliminary injunction was denied in March 1993, he and his wife, together with four (4) alleged buyers of portions of the land claimed by him, filed an identical complaint for injunction and damages with preliminary injunction a few months later, or in June 1993, this time with the Regional Trial Court of San Pedro, Laguna. Having been denied their temporary restraining order in one court, private respondents immediately instituted the same action in another tribunal - a deliberate tactic to seek out a different court which may grant their application for preliminary injunction, or at least give them another chance to obtain one. The almost word-for-word similarity of the complaints in both the Bian and San Pedro cases totally refutes such a theory, as can readily be observed from a comparative view of the two aforementioned complaints. The willful attempt by private respondents to obtain a preliminary injunction in another court after it failed to acquire the same from the original court constitutes grave abuse of the judicial process. Such disrespect is penalized by the summary dismissal of both actions as mandated by paragraph 17 of the Interim Rules and Guidelines issued by this Court on 11 January 1983 and Supreme Court Circular No. 28-91. (Bugnay Construction & Development Corporation v. Laron, 176 SCRA 240 [1989]) [G.R. No. 120958. December 16, 1996]
