6/8/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly passion, prejudice or personal aversion amounting to an evasion of a positive duty or to a virtual refusal to perform the duty enjoined, or to act at all in contemplation of law.[9] Also, it does not escape our notice that the trial court's assailed order terminating the Prosecution's presentation of evidence was merely interlocutory. This fact surely adds justification to the Court of Appeals' rejection of the petition for certiorari, because it is the settled rule that certiorari does not lie to review an interlocutory order, but only a final judgment or order that terminates the proceedings. Certiorari will be refused where there has been no final judgment or order and the proceeding for which the writ is sought is still pending and undetermined in the lower court. Indeed, a writ of certiorari is not intended to correct every controversial interlocutory ruling unless the ruling is attended by grave abuse of discretion or tainted by whimsical exercise of judgment equivalent to lack of jurisdiction, for the function of certiorari is limited to keeping an inferior court within its jurisdiction and to relieving persons from its arbitrary acts - acts that courts or judges have no power or authority in law to perform. Instead, the proper remedy for the petitioner was to proceed in the action until judgment, which, once rendered, might then be reviewed on appeal, along with the assailed interlocutory order.[10] As long as the trial court acted within its jurisdiction, its alleged error committed in the exercise of its jurisdiction amounted to nothing more than an error of judgment that was reviewable by a timely appeal, not by a special civil action of certiorari.[11] WHEREFORE, we affirm the decision dated September 12, 2002 rendered in CA-G.R. SP No. 66616. Costs of suit to be paid by the petitioner. SO ORDERED. Puno, CJ., (Chairperson), Carpio, Leonardo- De Castro, and Del Castillo,* JJ., concur. * Additional member per raffle list of 24 August 2009. [1] Rollo, pp. 20-25. [2] Id., p 30. [3] Id., p. 21. [4] Id., p. 10. [5] Id., pp. 17 & 21. [6] Id., p. 22. elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/49672 5/6