Judicial), which refer to the obligation of tribunals not to refuse to administer justice where there is ambiguity of provisions. 13. Therefore, according to the petitioners, the decision of the Court of Appeals violated the right of recourse to justice as well as the right to a defense given that Mrs. Maldonado was neither summoned nor granted a hearing to present her arguments. 14. The petitioners said that they filed an action of unconstitutionality “in a specific case” in hopes that the Constitutional Court of the Supreme Court of Justice might reason that the Court of Appeals' decision that it lacked jurisdiction was based on an unconstitutional interpretation of the Labor Code. They added that the Constitutional Court would then be able to order the Court of Appeals to find on the appeal lodged. 15. They said that the Constitutional Court rejected their motion with the argument that the appropriate time for presenting it had been before the Court of Appeals applied the Civil Service Law and the Labor Code. The petitioners submitted that such an interpretation was “distorted” as they had no way of knowing that the Division would apply those laws. 16. They also noted that, in its ruling, the Constitutional Court argued that the appeal to the Court of Appeals was not the appropriate procedure to dispute her dismissal. In spite of that, they said that the Constitutional Court did not indicate what the appropriate judicial remedy was. 17. The petitioners held that Mrs. Maldonado was refused recourse to justice inasmuch as neither the administrative or judicial decisions addressed the merits of her claim, in violation of her rights to a fair trial and judicial protection. 18. The petitioners stressed that there was no other suitable remedy by which to analyze and reverse Mrs. Maldonado's dismissal. With respect to the State's argument regarding the possibility of recourse to the Office of the Inspector General, they contended that the latter performs a mediating function and is not mandatory, as is established in the Ombudsman's Personnel Regulations. They argued that there was no provision to activate this mediation process as there existed a precedent whereby the Office of the Inspector General did not intervene in matters in which the parties were the State and its employees. 19. As to the State’s argument regarding the possibility of a remedy before a labor court of first instance, the petitioners said that, under the Labor Code, that court only has jurisdiction over labor disputes between employers and workers in the private sector. 20. As to the State's assertion that Mrs. Maldonado collected vacation pay and bonuses after her dismissal, the petitioners said that though that information was true, she did not receive any severance payment for all the years that she worked at the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman. They said that Mrs. Maldonado was duped into signing a document saying that she waived her rights and claims, given that she was told that there was no other payroll form to record the payments received. They held that Mrs. Maldonado has waived neither her rights nor claims as she only undertook not to again collect the entitlement payments already received. B. Position of the State 21. The State argued that the petitioners’ claim does not address either "the motives or reasons for the Human Rights Ombudsman's dismissal of the petitioner, or the legality or illegality of that act" but, rather, centers on the supposed violation of Olga Maldonado's right to a defense and recourse to justice. However, the State later noted that in no part of Ombudsman's Personnel Regulations does it say that acts contrary to the law, decency, and moral conventions committed by the institution's staff must first be judged by a court as a precondition for the dismissal of an employee of the institution. 3