THE Inquirer staff members were pleasantly surprised when Franklin Drilon, in a break from his busy past, attended the newspaper’s anniversary celebrations in December; the former Senate President even made beso beso with editor-in-chief Leticia Jimenez-Magsanoc like a long-lost colleague.

Magsanoc, Inquirer publisher Isagani Yambot and the top Inquirer editors were thus dumbfounded last Monday when they read in the Manila Standard Today that, despite the Drilon’s kiss-kiss act, his law firm had resurrected a dismissed libel case against the Inquirer.

An apologetic Drilon later wrote the Inquirer—the letter was published Saturday—to explain that their target for the revived offensive was not the Inquirer editors but only and singularly their former columnist, now Standard Today’s Victor C. Agustin.

You read it right. Drilon wrote the Inquirer to explain and refute a story that had appeared in the Standard Today.

There seems to be a pattern here.

When the “libelous” Cocktales column came out in 2005, Accra also never bothered to write to the newspaper where it appeared; instead, Accra’s top litigation lawyer Rogelio Vinluan used his column in the competing Philippine Star to strike back at Cocktales, before filing the libel complaint.

To the embarrassment of Vinluan and fellow litigator Victor Lazatin, Makati Regional Trial Court Judge Reinato Quilala dismissed their case outright.

Reason? The blue-chip law firm that produced the likes of Edgardo Angara, Raul Roco, Katrina Legarda, and Francis Lim had failed to state their company address in the libel complaint, a Revised Penal Code provision that every law student must know in order to pass the Bar.

With the dismissal, we thought that that was that, especially since Vinluan had, prior to this tempest, used Cocktales to attack the Supreme Court for flip-flopping and giving back to former Batangas Gov. Antonio Leviste the Katipunan Road section outside White Plains, where Vinluan lived.

Our impression was all the more reinforced, despite the misgivings by media colleagues who had manned the picket line in the Bulletin when Drilon was Cory Aquino’s Labor secretary, when Drilon and yours truly reached an understanding -- after the dismissal of the original Accra complaint -- in what diplomats would describe as frank-and-fruitful exchange.

How naive we turned out to be.

Apparently, some character traits, as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had also ruefully found out, never change.

(Disclosure: The Accra law office last week dutifully sent the Standard Today its regular monthly billing statement. The Drilon law firm is being retained by this newspaper to protect its editorial staff from libel cases.)

Heard through the grapevine

The Manila Polo Club abruptly canceled yesterday’s Royal Pahang Cup—an annual high goal match featuring Malaysian royals along with high goal polo professionals from Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Spain, and Australia—a victim of the long-standing rivalry between Marcos son-in-law Gregorio Araneta III and Banco Filipino heir Albert “Bobby” Aguirre.

To save the day, Aguirre generously decided to host the high and low goal matches at his Los Tamaraos field in BF Homes subdivision, complete with cocktails, dinner and dancing.

(Web site: www.cocktales.ph; E-mail: cocktales_mst@pldtdsl.net)