FIRST DIVISION
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trust international paper
corporation, petitioner, - versus - marilou r.
pelaez,
Respondent. |
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G.R. No. 164871 Present: PANGANIBAN,
C.J. Chairperson, YNARES-SANTIAGO, AUSTRIA-MARTINEZ, CALLEJO, SR., and CHICO-NAZARIO, JJ. Promulgated: August 22, 2006 |
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CHICO-NAZARIO, J.:
This Petition for Review under Rule
45 of the Rules of Court with an Urgent Application for the Issuance of a
Temporary Restraining Order and/or Writ of Preliminary Injunction, seeks to set
aside the Resolutions of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. SP No. 73356 entitled,
“Marilou R. Pelaez v. National Labor Relations Commission, et al.” dated
13 February 2004[1] and 29
July 2004, respectively. The first
Resolution denied petitioner Trust International Paper Corporation’s (TIPCO) Petition
for Relief from Judgment, while the second denied its motion seeking reconsideration
thereof.
Respondent Marilou
R. Pelaez started her employment with petitioner as
Secretary. She earned various
promotions, the last of which was her appointment as Corporate Cashier in 1993.
After undergoing substantial business
losses for the fiscal year 1996-1997, petitioner implemented cost-cutting and
streamlining programs to alleviate its financial predicament. In the course of carrying out the said
programs, several positions were abolished and declared redundant, one of which
was the position of Corporate Cashier.
Thus, on
Sometime in January 1998, respondent
found out the creation of the position of Treasury Clerk in petitioner’s plantilla which has the same job description and
responsibilities as that of Corporate Cashier. Feeling deceived, respondent immediately filed
on 6 January 1998 a Complaint for illegal dismissal, non-payment/underpayment
of salaries, separation pay, retirement benefits, service incentive leave and
sick leave benefits, and damages against petitioner, Elon
Ting, the president of TIPCO, Efren TanLapco, the Chief Operating Officer of TIPCO and Jose E.
Reyes, the Chief Financial Officer of TIPCO before the Arbitration Branch of
the DOLE-NCR.
On P539,974.20 and correspondingly signed a Deed of Release and
Quitclaim.
In a Decision dated
CONFORMABLY WITH THE FOREGOING, judgment is hereby rendered
finding complainant to have been illegally retrenched by respondents. Consequently, they are ordered to pay in solidum complainant as follows:
a) Backwages as of August 29 August, 1999 – Php 484,000.00
b) Separation Pay – Php
459,800.00
c) Moral Damages – Php
300,000.00
d) Exemplary Damages – Php
100,000.00
e) Vacation and sick leaves – Php
55,974.20
f) 5% of the awarded money claims as attorney’s
fees.
The sum of Php 539,974.20
should be deducted from the awards granted to complainant.[2]
On
In a Decision dated
WHEREFORE, the decision appealed from is hereby
VACATED and SET ASIDE and a new one entered DISMISSING the complaint for lack
of merit.[3]
On
Unfazed with the setback, respondent filed
a special civil action for certiorari
under Rule 65 of the Rules of Court with the Court of Appeals arguing that
grave abuse of discretion was committed by the NLRC in setting aside the Labor
Arbiter’s Decision despite having been duly supported by the facts and the law.
In due time, the Court of Appeals
rendered a Decision in favor of respondent on the ground that respondent’s
dismissal due to redundancy did not meet the requirements of law; hence, the same
was illegal. The Court of Appeals
decreed:
WHEREFORE, premises considered, the instant petition
is GRANTED. The decision of public
respondent NLRC in NLRC NCR CA No. 021691-99, as well as its subsequent
resolution denying petitioner’s motion for reconsideration, are hereby ANNULLED
AND SET ASIDE and the decision of the labor arbiter a quo REINSTATED.[4]
The Decision of the Court of Appeals
became final and executory as no appeal or motion for
reconsideration was filed by either party.
Hence, on
On
Petitioner contended that the Siguion Reyna law firm was never remiss in its duty to
follow up the status of the case with Atty. Cardinez.
In fact, it was the law firm itself,
through Atty. Cardinez’s supervising lawyers and
co-counsels, Attys. Carla E. Santamaria-Seña, Cheryll Ann L. Peña and Rean Mayo D. Javier, who had to elicit reports from
her. When asked about the developments
of the case, Atty. Cardinez supposedly informed the
law firm that everything was in order regarding petitioner’s defense, when in
fact, it was not. Eventually, Atty. Cardinez never reported to work and that she was nowhere to
be found despite the law firm’s diligent efforts to search for her. She did not turn over the case files in her possession,
including the Court of Appeals file folders of the instant case.
Petitioner maintained that the acts
of Atty. Cardinez in misrepresenting to the law firm
that everything was in order regarding its defense, when in fact, it was not, and the fact that she took the files with her
constitute gross negligence and should not bind petitioner. Corollarily, petitioner
argues that the Siguion Reyna law firm’s fault can
only be categorized as an excusable neglect for it was not remiss in making
follow-ups about the status of the case with Atty. Cardinez. It acknowledged that the law firm’s mistake
was that it put faith in the assurances of Atty. Cardinez,
who repeatedly gave her word that nothing was amiss in the defense of
petitioner’s position in the instant case.
Unconvinced, the Court of Appeals, in
a Resolution dated
There is no use arguing that the instant case was
unloaded by Attys. Peña and Javier, to a certain
Atty. Elena C. Cardinez, as it is the responsibility
of the law firm of Siguion Reyna Montecillo
and Ongsiako Law Office itself, to prepare and submit
the appropriate relief or remedy of its client. The negligence or failure of its partners or
associates to perform its duties and tasks is not excusable negligence that
could merit relief under Rule 38 of the Rules of Court.
The doctrinal rule is that the negligence of the
counsel binds the client because, otherwise, there would never be an end to a
suit so long as counsel could allege its own fault or negligence to support the
client’s case and obtain remedies and relief already lost by the operation of
law.[5]
Subsequently, petitioner filed a Motion
for Reconsideration which was denied by the Court of Appeals in a Resolution
dated
Hence, the instant
Petition.
In its Memorandum, petitioner
submitted the following issues:
A.
WHETHER THE COURT OF APPEALS COMMITTED GRAVE ERROR
WHEN IT FAILED TO RECOGNIZE THE GROSS AND PALPABLE NEGLIGENCE, BORDERING ON
FRAUD, COMMITTED BY PETITIONER’S FORMER HANDLING COUNSEL, ATTY. CARDINEZ, WHOSE
NEGLIGENCE AND ACTIVE MISREPRESENTATION PREVENTED PETITIONER FROM EXHAUSTING
ALL THE LEGAL REMEDIES AVAILABLE TO IT, PARTICULARLY, THE REMEDY OF APPEAL TO
THE SUPREME COURT.
B.
WHETHER THE COURT OF APPEALS COMMITTED SERIOUS ERROR
WHEN IT STRICTLY APPLIED THE TECHNICAL RULES OF PROCEDURE TO THE DETRIMENT OF
SUBSTANTIAL JUSTICE.
C.
WHETHER THE COURT OF APPEALS COMMITTED GRAVE ERROR
WHEN IT FAILED TO TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION PETITIONER’S GOOD AND SUBSTANTIAL
DEFENSE, WHICH MUST BE FULLY VENTILATED, CONSIDERING THAT IT STANDS TO LOSE THE
STAGGERING SUM OF MORE THAN TWO MILLION PESOS (P2,000,000.00)[6]
At the onset, it must be pointed out that
the present petition seeking the setting aside of the Court of Appeals’
Resolutions dated 13 February 2004 and 29 July 2004, denying petitioner’s
petition for relief from judgment, is a petition for review on certiorari under Rule 45 of the Rules of
Court.
Section 1(b) of Rule 41 of the Rules
of Court, however, provides:
SECTION 1. Subject of appeal. – An appeal may be taken from a judgment
or final order that completely disposes of the case,
or of a particular matter therein when declared by these Rules to be appealable.
No
appeal may be taken from:
x
x x x
(b) An order denying a petition for relief or any
similar motion seeking relief from judgment.
x x x
x
In
all the above instances where the judgment or final order is not appealable, the aggrieved party may file an appropriate
special civil action under Rule 65.
Thus, in Azucena v. Foreign Manpower Services,[7] it
was held:
Neither
may petitioner seek to set aside the Court of Appeals’ April 26, 2001 Resolution
denying his petition for relief from judgment through the same mode of review
(petition for review on certiorari), for under Section 1(b) of Rule 41 of
the Rules of Court, the denial of a petition for relief from judgment is
subject only to a special civil action for certiorari under Rule 65. (Emphasis
supplied.)
Based on the foregoing, the denial of
a petition for relief from judgment can only be assailed before this Court via a special civil action under Rule 65
and not through a petition for review on certiorari
under Rule 45. In availing of a petition
for review on certiorari under Rule
45 to obtain the reversal of the Court of Appeals’ Resolutions denying its
petition for relief from judgment, petitioner certainly has made use of the
wrong remedy.
Even if this Court was to treat the
instant petition as a special civil action for certiorari under Rule 65, the same would still have to be
dismissed.
In Mercury Drug Corporation v. Court of Appeals,[8] the
Court clarified the nature of a petition for relief from judgment:
A
petition for relief from judgment is an equitable remedy that is allowed only in
exceptional cases when there is no other available or adequate remedy. When a party has another remedy available to
him, which may be either a motion for new trial or appeal from an adverse
decision of the trial court, and he was not prevented by fraud, accident,
mistake or excusable negligence from filing such motion or taking such appeal,
he cannot avail himself of this petition. x x x.
This Court likewise ruled:
Indeed, relief will not be granted to a party who
seeks avoidance from the effects of the judgment when the loss of the remedy at
law was due to his own negligence; otherwise the petition for relief can be
used to revive the right to appeal which had been lost thru inexcusable
negligence.[9]
In the present case, petitioner
posits that the Court of Appeals committed grave error when it failed to
recognize the gross and palpable negligence, bordering on fraud, committed by
Atty. Cardinez, whose negligence prevented petitioner
from exhausting all the legal remedies available to it.
It is undisputed that the counsel of
record of petitioner is the Siguion Reyna law firm. The law firm failed to notify petitioner of
the adverse decision of the Court of Appeals to enable it to file a motion for
reconsideration or to appeal from the said decision. The law firm’s failure to inform petitioner
of the decision is inexcusable negligence which cannot be a ground for relief
from judgment. This is in line with
jurisprudence that notice sent to counsel of record is binding upon the client,
and the neglect or failure of counsel to inform his client of an adverse
judgment resulting in the loss of right to appeal will not justify the setting
aside of a judgment that is valid and regular on its face.[10]
The negligence of Atty. Cardinez, the law firm’s new associate, apparent in her mishandling
of the cause of petitioner likewise constitutes inexcusable negligence. Negligence, to be excusable, must be one which
ordinary diligence and prudence could have not guarded against.
It must be pointed out that Atty. Cardinez’s name did not appear in any of the pleadings
filed by petitioner before the Labor Arbiter, the NLRC, and the Court of
Appeals. It was only in the petition for
relief filed before the Court of Appeals that the name of Atty. Cardinez appeared for the first time. In the petition for relief, Atty. Cardinez was blamed by petitioner and its counsel, the Siguion Reyna law firm, for squandering petitioner’s
opportunity to appeal the Court of Appeals’ decision. What appears on the records is that the
Comment and Memorandum of petitioner before the Court of Appeals were signed by
Attys. Carla E. Santamaria-Seña, Cheryll
Ann L. Peña and Rean Mayo
D. Javier.
From the foregoing, it is apparent
that the handling lawyers of the law firm were putting the blame on Atty. Cardinez when they lost the case and forgot to file the
appeal. Besides, if the case was, indeed,
unloaded to Atty. Cardinez, the supervising lawyers
would have detected the omission of the former considering that it is a common
practice in a law firm that when it hires a new associate, his or her work is
ordinarily reviewed by the more senior associate of the law firm. If the supervising lawyers of Atty. Cardinez, namely, Attys. Seña, Peña and Javier, were not remiss in their duty to follow up
the status of the case, they would have known that they have not received or
reviewed any pleadings from Atty. Cardinez pertaining
to the case under consideration. Simply,
petitioner’s counsel, the Siguion Reyna law firm
itself, was guilty of inexcusable neglect in handling petitioner’s case before
the Court of Appeals.
Petitioner insists that its case is
an exception to the general rule that the negligence of counsel binds the
client. Petitioner invokes this Court’s ruling
in People’s Homesite
and Housing Operation v. Workmen’s Compensation Commission,[11] Somoso v. Court of Appeals,[12] Apex Mining, Inc. v. Court of Appeals,[13]
Salazar
v. Court of Appeals,[14] Sarraga, Sr. v. Banco Filipino
Savings and Mortgage Bank,[15]
and Heirs of Pael
v. Court of Appeals,[16] where
this Court departed from the general rule that the client is bound by the
mistakes of his lawyer considering that, in said cases, the lawyers were grossly
negligent in their duty to maintain their client’s cause and such amounted to a
deprivation of their client’s property without due process of law. In said cases, the petitions for relief from
judgment were given due course. However,
we find that the ruling in said cases do not apply in the instant case.
In
People’s Homesite,
the counsel failed to apprise the petitioners therein of the hearing and the
case was heard in their absence. The
counsel also did not inform the petitioners that he had received a copy of the
decision and neither did he file a motion for reconsideration or a petition to
set aside judgment to protect the interests of his clients. When asked to explain, the counsel merely
said that he did not inform the petitioners because the case escaped his
attention. On account of these attendant
facts, this Court found that there was “something fishy and suspicious” with
the actions of counsel. The Court therein, in allowing the petition for relief
from judgment and in remanding the case to the court of origin, had, in mind,
the attending probability that petitioner’s counsel colluded with the adverse
party, which is utterly wanting in the present case.
In the case at bar, petitioner’s
counsel was able to actively defend its case before the Labor Arbiter, the NLRC
and the Court of Appeals. In fact, the Siguion Reyna law firm was able to obtain a favorable
decision for petitioner before the NLRC. The instant case is clearly at variance with
the People’s Homesite
case.
In Somoso, the counsel of spouses Somoso informed
them that he was withdrawing his appearance as counsel of the case. A decision dated
In the present case, it has been
Attys. Santamaria-Seña, Peña
and Javier who participated in the proceedings before the Court of
Appeals. They did not notify the Court
of Appeals that they had withdrawn from the case. There was completely no reason for them not to
file an appeal, being the handling counsel of record during the pendency of the case before the Court of Appeals.
The
case of Apex Mining, Inc. invoked by
petitioner is not on all fours with the instant case. In Apex,
petitioners’ counsel did not attend the scheduled hearing for the reception of
the evidence. The law firm did not even
bother to inform its client of the scheduled hearing, as a result of which both
counsel and petitioners were unable to attend the same. After the trial court issued an order
declaring petitioners in default for having waived their right to present
evidence, their counsel did not take steps to have the same set aside. In addition, the negligent counsel
deliberately misrepresented in the progress report that the case was still
pending with Court of Appeals when the same was dismissed months earlier. These circumstances are absent in the case
under consideration because at no time was petitioner was deprived of its right
to submit evidence to support its argument.
Neither
can the case of Salazar be applied in
the case under consideration. In the
former, petitioners were deprived of their right to present evidence at the
trial through the gross and palpable mistake of their counsel who agreed to
submit the case for decision without fully substantiating their defense. In the instant case, petitioner was able to
ventilate its defense though various pleadings and documentary evidence before
the Labor Arbiter, the NLRC and the Court of Appeals.
In
Sarraga,
the petition for relief from judgment was granted due to the attending
circumstance where the counsel of record
was grossly negligent in defending the cause of the client. On the other hand, in the present case,
petitioner is placing the blame on the alleged gross negligence of an attorney who
was not even been shown to have participated in the proceedings of the case.
In
Heirs of Antonio Pael,
this Court found that there was a showing of “badges of fraud” displayed by the
counsel of the unsuccessful party when he resorted to two clearly inconsistent remedies,
namely appeal and motion for new trial.
In contrast, the instant case merely illustrates a scenario where a
counsel committed a simple and inexcusable negligence to the prejudice of the
client.
In sum, this is not a case where the
negligence of counsel is one that is so gross, palpable, pervasive and reckless
which deprives the party of his or her day in court. For this reason, the Court need no longer
concern itself with the propriety of the ruling of the Court of Appeals
reinstating the decision of the Labor Arbiter. The Court is bound by the Court of Appeal’s
ruling which had become final and executory due to
the simple and inexcusable negligence of petitioner’s counsel in allowing the reglementary
period to lapse without perfecting an appeal.
WHEREFORE, the
petition is DENIED. The Resolutions of the Court
of Appeals dated
No. 73356 denying petitioner’s
petition for relief from judgment, are AFFIRMED.
Costs against
petitioner.
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MINITA V. CHICO-NAZARIO Associate Justice |
Chief Justice
Chairperson
Associate Justice
Associate Justice
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ROMEO J.
CALLEJO, SR. Associate Justice |
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Pursuant to Article VIII,
Section 13 of the Constitution, it is hereby certified that the conclusions in
the above Decision were reached in consultation before the case was assigned to
the writer of the opinion of the Court’s Division.
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ARTEMIO V.
PANGANIBAN Chief Justice |
[1] Penned by Associate Justice Rodrigo V. Cosico with Associate Justices Juan Q. Enriquez, Jr. and Hakim S. Abdulwahid, concurring.
[2] Rollo, p. 171.
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7] G.R. No. 147955,
[8] 390 Phil 902, 912-913 (2000).
[9] Tuason v. Court of Appeals, 326 Phil. 169, 178-179 (1996).
[10] Azucena v. Foreign Manpower Services,
G.R. No. 147955,
[11] 120 Phil. 994 (1964).
[12] G.R. No. 78050,
[13] 377 Phil. 482 (1999).
[14] 426 Phil. 864 (2002).
[15] 442 Phil. 55 (2002).
[16] 382 Phil. 222 (2000).